http://www.news.wisc.edu/16808 Isolated forest patches lose species, diversity
June 9, 2009
by Jill Sakai
Failing to see the forest for the trees may be causing us to overlook the declining health of Wisconsin's forest ecosystems.
Even areas with apparently robust trees and lush canopies are threatened as forests are increasingly fragmented by roads and development, becoming isolated green islands in a sea of agricultural fields, housing tracts, and strip malls, say UW-Madison researchers.
A new study is revealing that decades of fragmentation of Wisconsin's forests have taken a largely unseen toll on the sustainability of these natural ecosystems.
The long generation times of trees and other plants have masked many of the ecological changes already under way in the patches of forest that remain, says study co-author Don Waller, a professor in the Department of Botany and Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at UW-Madison. "Things may look healthy, but over time we see an erosion of biodiversity," he says.
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