At the same time, this study Akt inhibitor makes clear that further research is needed on the biodiversity outcomes of shrubland and grassland afforestation as few studies were available in these categories. In addition, the trends we found suggest that new plantations should utilize indigenous tree Rapamycin nmr species to enhance within-plantation biodiversity, but more research is needed on the effects of afforestation in grasslands and shrublands using

species that are native to nearby forests or woodlands versus exotic species (Carnus et al. 2006; Brockerhoff et al. 2008). However, exotic plantations do support some biodiversity, even when compared to primary forest, and should not necessarily be considered ‘green deserts’ or completely dismissed by conservation biologists. Thus, although plantations often support fewer specialist species than natural ecosystems, under some conditions they can play an important role in biodiversity conservation and recuperation, particularly at the landscape level. Acknowledgments We thank the Geography Department at San Diego State University for support of this project and we are grateful for the comments of two anonymous

reviewers that helped us improve on an earlier version of this manuscript. We also thank Will Anderson for creating the map of publications and observations. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any Selleck PLX3397 noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. CYTH4 Electronic supplementary material Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material. Supplementary material 1 (DOCX 29 kb) References Alrababah MA, Alhamad MA, Suwaileh A, Al-Gharaibeh M (2007) Biodiversity of semi-arid Mediterranean grasslands: impact of grazing and afforestation. Appl Veg Sci 10:257–264CrossRef Andres C, Ojeda F (2002) Effects of afforestation

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