Dear José António,

Thank you very much for your insights...highly appreciated! I will look at the Mexican case study by Huber-Sannwald et al. 2012; seems very interesting!

Regards

Hello John

Though this study is not directly linked to you but can provide some guidelines for cases of developing countries (related to forests). 

Article Anthropogenic disturbances and their impact on vegetation in...

Dear Rajiv,

Skimmed through the publications...must say it's a nice read. Thanks!

My concern is that we need more (like five) indicators to evaluate the impact of various chronic disturbances besides the biodiversity indexes (like in your case), soil stability or carbon fluxes as is normally the case.

Having more indicators will offer conclusive insights on the impact and extent of  various disturbances. To me, this is critical given the volatility of some of the indicators such as carbon...

Regards

Hi John,

I would suggest the methodological toolbox of a "Rapid Ecosystem Functioning Assessment" (REFA), as published by Sebastian Meyer from Munich and his colleagues:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534715000968

We already tested some of these methods - such as the artificial caterpillars as a rapid method to assess natural pest control - in West African rangelands. The good thing is, that due to the quick&easy assessment methods, you get a more holistic picture of how disturbance regimes affect multiple aspects of ecosystem functionality and ecosystem service provision.

Best regards

Anja