Forests both support biodiversity and provide a wide range of benefits to people at multiple scales. Global and national remote sensing analyses of drivers of forest change generally focus on broad-scale influences on area (composition), ignoring arrangement (configuration). To explore meso-scale relationships, we compared forest composition and configuration to six indicators of economic growth over 23 years (1992–2015) of satellite data for 23 island nations. Based on global analyses, we expected to find clear relationships between economic growth and forest cover. Eleven islands lost 1 to 50% of forest cover, eight gained 1 to 28%, and four remained steady. Surprisingly, we found no clear relationship between economic growth trends and forest-cover change trajectories. These results differ from those of global land-cover change analyses and suggest that conservation-oriented policy and management approaches developed at both national and local scales are ignoring key meso-scale processes.

中文翻译：

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海洋岛屿的森林砍伐和经济增长趋势突出了中尺度分析和改进中程保护理论的必要性

森林既支持生物多样性，又在多个层面为人们提供广泛的利益。全球和国家对森林变化驱动因素的遥感分析通常侧重于对面积（组成）的广泛影响，而忽略了排列（配置）。为了探索中尺度关系，我们将 23 个岛国的 23 年（1992-2015）卫星数据中的森林构成和配置与六个经济增长指标进行了比较。根据全球分析，我们预计会发现经济增长与森林覆盖率之间的明确关系。11 个岛屿失去了 1% 至 50% 的森林覆盖率，8 个岛屿增加了 1% 至 28%，4 个岛屿保持稳定。令人惊讶的是，我们发现经济增长趋势与森林覆盖变化轨迹之间没有明确的关系。