Plantation-associated drainage of Southeast Asian peatlands has accelerated in recent years. Draining exposes the upper peat layer to oxygen, leading to elevated decomposition rates and net soil carbon losses. Empirical studies indicate positive relationships between long-term water table (WT) depth and soil carbon loss rate in peatlands. These correlations potentially enable using WT depth as a proxy for soil carbon losses from peatland plantations. Here, we compile data from published research assessing WT depth and carbon balance in tropical plantations on peat.

Solutions to meet growing food requirements in a world of limited suitable land and degrading environment focus mainly on increasing crop yields, particularly in poorly performing regions, and reducing animal product consumption. Increasing yields could alleviate land requirements, but imposing higher soil nutrient withdrawals and in most cases larger fertilizer inputs.

Tropical deforestation from developing countries, including Indonesia, contributes to emissions of greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide, the primary driver of global warming. Primary forest clearing also results in the loss of biodiversity due to the destruction of unique tropical forest habitats. Present understanding of forest change within Indonesia lacks consensus.

The increasing demand for agricultural products and the uncertainty of international food markets has recently drawn the attention of governments and agribusiness firms toward investments in productive agricultural land, mostly in the developing world. The targeted countries are typically located in regions that have remained only marginally utilized because of lack of modern technology. It is expected that in the long run large scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) for commercial farming will bring the technology required to close the existing crops yield gaps.

The geographic distribution of Bornean orang-utans and its overlap with existing land-use categories (protected areas, logging and plantation concessions) is a necessary foundation to prioritize conservation planning. Based on an extensive orang-utan survey dataset and a number of environmental variables, we modelled an orang-utan distribution map. The modelled orang-utan distribution map covers 155,106 km2 (21% of Borneo's landmass) and reveals four distinct distribution areas. The most important environmental predictors are annual rainfall and land cover.

Industrial agricultural plantations are a rapidly increasing yet largely unmeasured source of tropical land cover change. Here, we evaluate impacts of oil palm plantation development on land cover, carbon flux, and agrarian community lands in West Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo. With a spatially explicit land change/carbon bookkeeping model, parameterized using high-resolution satellite time series and informed by socioeconomic surveys, we assess previous and project future plantation expansion under five scenarios.

The carrying capacity of Indian agriculture to support oilseeds production to meet the vegetable oil needs of the Indian population has been considered in the context of available sources of oil from oilseed and nonoilseed origins. India needs to produce 17.84 Mt of vegetable oils to meet the nutritional fat needs of projected population of 1685 million by 2050. This can be easily achieved from various sources like annual oilseeds and also from supplementary sources of oil like rice bran, cottonseed, coconut, oil palm, corn, etc.

The upcoming global mechanism for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries should include and prioritize tropical peatlands.