The combined effects of changes in climate and land cover expose millions of people to an increased likelihood of heat illness. Impacts of heat stress on health have primarily been quantified for urban environments, particularly in developed countries. Far less is known in other settings, including the effects that ongoing tropical deforestation has on local temperature and its consequences for people living in these rapidly changing landscapes. Here, we explore links between deforestation and human well-being in the tropical landscapes of Borneo. Recent extensive social surveys from nearly 500 villages throughout Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) revealed widespread perceptions that temperature regulation by forests is important for human health. Here, we build on this analysis by examining the relationship of these responses with satellite derived temperature and land-use patterns, as well as rates of deforestation. Our aim is to determine whether local environmental and landscape characteristics drive perceptions of temperature regulation services and to quantify the importance of forested landscapes in providing cooling services for human health and well-being.
Results/Conclusions
Of the 4,634 villagers from 477 villages who answered the open-ended question, “What health benefits does the forest provide?”, the most frequent answer (expressed independently by 28% of respondents) was that forests kept the environment cool. Predictor variables were extracted from three satellite derived datasets to explore potential spatial and temporal drivers of village-level temperature perceptions and to test three hypotheses: We used land surface temperature (LST) to test the importance of local climate (H1); land use and land cover (LULC) to test the importance of landscape fragmentation (H2); and forest loss and canopy cover (FLCC) to test the importance of temporal change (H3). Boosted regression tree models performed very well in explaining variation in temperature perceptions among villages (87% correlation coefficient, 69% of total variance accounted by the model) and results indicated some support for all three hypotheses. We found that villagers were more likely to notice the forest cooling services if they were from hotter villages with recently cleared surrounding forests. Our results highlight the role of forests in regulating the local climate. This ecosystem service is highly threatened, and yet increasingly vital for avoiding heat illness and enabling adaptation to global climate change. Next steps include better quantification of temperature effects of deforestation, establishment of links with human health, and investigation of landscape design solutions that will both mitigate these effects and serve community needs.