Prospects and priorities for research towards forest policy reform and the sustainable management of biodiverse tropical forest.

To facilitate the sustainable management of biodiverse tropical forests, we propose that the ecological services and goods of these forests be assessed. The assessment should start with a review of existing ecological data, to be supplemented with new data on ecological service values in order to improve the flexibility of evaluation. In this highly complicated ecosystem, conflicting values have precluded finding a solution to deforestation and depletion. We believe that ecological service assessment will play an important role in connecting different fields of ecological studies and linking forest managers and field ecologists. We propose setting up a model site at Pasoh Forest region that includes both pristine forest and other land-use types (e.g. production forest, plantations). By integrating and mapping ecological service data at the landscape level, we will be able to prepare a risk management program, a landscape zoning plan, and other planning instruments to optimize the ecological service values of the model site. We also propose other prospective research, such as long-term monitoring of the reproduction and genetic diversity of tree species and the use of remote sensing to improve ecosystem monitoring, which we believe will facilitate integrated ecosystem assessment.