In one study, however, plantations were established on a succession of grasslands and shrublands selleck screening library without distinguishing which plantations were established on which land cover (Cremene et al. 2005); in this case both a shrubland to plantation and grassland to plantation category were included. In another study (Ecroyd and Brockerhoff 2005), plantations were primarily

established by replacing shrublands, but at the same time other shrublands were replaced by exotic pasture; in this case, both shrubland to plantation and exotic or degraded pasture to plantation cases were included. In the primary forest to plantation category, however, the majority of cases found (19) compared primary forest to plantations established on land that was formerly primary forest but had been used for agriculture or grazing (intermediate land use) prior to planting. We included both direct and indirect comparisons in these studies in order to not lose valuable knowledge regarding the capacity of plantations to serve as restoration tools. While

the intermediate land use and land use history will clearly influence biodiversity outcomes (Ito et al. 2004; Lee et al. 2005; Brunet 2007; Soo et al. 2009), these cases were included in order to not lose information and to be able to compare indirect and direct comparisons. Those transitions involving direct comparisons and those with an intermediate land use are clearly indicated Monoiodotyrosine in Appendix 1 (see Electronic supplementary material). In some cases plantation biodiversity was compared with two or more alternate land uses that represented the land cover at different points FK506 solubility dmso over the past 50 years. For example, in Goldman et al. (2008) native plantations were established on exotic pasture that had been previously deforested. In this case, plantation biodiversity was compared to both adjacent pasture and to native primary forest with one

observation Selleck FRAX597 classified as degraded or exotic pasture to plantation and the other as primary forestry to plantation. For studies that presented data from multiple plantations, each pair was recorded as a data point or observation. All of the studies that were included reported species richness (SR, either as the mean species per unit time or area or as the total amount encountered over the entire study area) in both the plantation and paired land use; some articles included a species list in the appendix from which species richness was calculated. From these data, change in species richness following plantation establishment was calculated as follows: $$ \textPercent\,\Updelta \,\textSR = \left( \textPlantation SR – \textControl SR \right) / \textControl SR \times 100 $$ The same was done for native species richness, narrow and endemic species richness, and exotic species richness where this information was available.