After decades of plantation agriculture, coconut palms dominate over half of Pacific atoll forests
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Coconut palms are king throughout the tropics, serving as the foundation for human lives and cultures across the Pacific Ocean for centuries. However, 200 years of planting by colonial interests transformed the palm from the revered "Tree of Life" to a cash crop monoculture grown on Pacific atolls for a singular purpose—production of coconut oil (copra) for export around the world.
Despite wide interest in the global footprint of palm crops, the distribution of coconut palms across tropical Pacific atolls has received little attention until now. Published in Environmental Research Letters, research from UC Santa Barbara and The Nature Conservancy provides the first comprehensive map of the vast footprint of coconut palm agriculture across nearly every Pacific atoll.
"Coconut oil used to be essential to atoll economies, but today most coconut palm plantations are abandoned and overgrown," said lead author Michael Burnett, a doctoral student in UCSB's Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology. "With the growing climate threats facing Pacific atolls, it's critical to figure out where these abandoned plantations are using up critical land and water resources, and where there may be opportunities to restore the native forests to the benefit of islands and islanders."
