Conservation of tropical dry forests on Pacific islands

Tropical dry forests in the Pacific may currently be the world’s most endangered forest type and could be ideal for testing a number of remote sensing, biogeographic, and conservation theories associated with extremely fragmented systems.  This research focuses on woody plants (trees, shrubs, lianas) in five regions that contain tropical dry forest (Marquesas, Marianas, New Caledonia, Fiji, and Hawaii).  The primary objectives of this research are to undertake biogeographic comparisons of floristic composition, natural history characteristics, and forest structure and determine the conservation status of woody plants in remaining fragments of tropical dry forest in Biodiversity Hotspots of the Pacific.  Field data on woody plants were collected at the stand level using Gentry's transect method at 45 sites in the Pacific.  I test theories for predicting patterns of species richness using satellite imagery and test a number of hypotheses concerning biogeographic patterns of functional natural history characteristics and forest structure.