The impacts of degradation and deforestation on tropical forests are poorly understood, particularly at landscape scales. We present an extensive ecosystem analysis of the impacts of logging and conversion of tropical forest to oil palm from a large-scale study in Borneo, synthesizing responses from 82 variables categorized into four ecological levels spanning a broad suite of ecosystem properties: (i) structure and environment, (ii) species traits, (iii) biodiversity, and (iv) ecosystem functions. Responses were highly heterogeneous and often complex and nonlinear. Variables that were directly impacted by the physical process of timber extraction, such as soil structure, were sensitive to even moderate amounts of logging, whereas measures of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning were generally resilient to logging but more affected by conversion to oil palm plantation.

Asian School of the Environment Nanyang Technological University Singapore

Centre for Global Wood Security University of Cambridge Cambridge UK

Department of Biology and Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery University of Oxford Oxford UK

Department of Biology University of Oxford Oxford UK

Department of Biology York University Toronto ON Canada

Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences University of Manchester Manchester UK

Department of Environmental Science Policy and Management University of California Berkeley Berkeley CA USA

Department of Forest Ecology Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences Czech University of Life Sciences Prague Prague Czech Republic

Department of Geographical Sciences University of Maryland College Park MD USA

Department of Plant Sciences and Conservation Research Institute University of Cambridge Cambridge UK

Durrell Institute for Conservation and Ecology School of Anthropology and Conservation University of Kent Canterbury UK

Environmental Change Institute and Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery School of Geography and the Environment University of Oxford Oxford UK

Escuela de Biología Universidad Nacional San Antonio Abad del Cusco Cuzco Peru

Faculty of Natural Sciences Imperial College London UK

Forest Research Centre Sabah Forestry Department Sandakan Sabah Malaysia

Institute for Tropical Biology and Conservation Universiti Malaysia Sabah Kota Kinabalu Sabah Malaysia

Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences University of Aberdeen Aberdeen UK

Lancaster Environment Centre Lancaster University Lancaster UK

School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences Queen Mary University of London London UK

School of Biological Sciences University of Aberdeen Aberdeen UK

School of Environmental and Rural Science University of New England Armidale Australia

School of GeoSciences and NCEO University of Edinburgh Edinburgh UK

School of Natural and Environmental Sciences Newcastle University Newcastle upon Tyne UK

Southeast Asia Rainforest Research Partnership Lahad Datu Sabah Malaysia

UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology Lancaster Environment Centre Lancaster UK

UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology Wallingford UK

University Museum of Zoology University of Cambridge Cambridge UK

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