The growing challenge of food insecurity in the Global South has called for new research on the contribution of forests to food security. However, even progressive forest management institutions such as Nepal's community forestry programme have failed to address this issue. We analyse Nepal's community forestry programme and find that forest policies and local institutional practices have historically evolved to regulate forests either as sources of timber or as a means of biodiversity conservation, disregarding food security outcomes for local people. Disciplinary divisions between forestry and the agriculture sector have limited the prospect of strengthening forest–food security linkages. We conclude that the policy and legislative framework and formal bureaucratic practices are influenced by ‘modern forestry science’, which led to community forestry rules and practices not considering the contribution of forests to food security. Furthermore, forestry science has a particularly narrow focus on timber production and conservation. We argue for the need to recognise the importance of local knowledge and community practices of using forests for food. We propose adaptive and transformational approaches to knowledge generation and the application of such knowledge in order to support institutional change and policy reform and to enable landscape-specific innovations in forest–food linkages.

In the article above there is a spelling mistake in the Figure 3 legend. Largge should be Large. The correct Figure 3 legend is shown below:-

Figure 3 Biomass values of herbivorous fish functional groups – browsers, grazers and detritivores, and scrapers and small excavators – for each island. Large excavators and bioeroders were not observed, and thus are not included in the graph.

Page 5, right column in the ‘Ecological perspective and management implications section’, in the second paragraph the third sentence should read . . .One potential management tool that considers these needs and limitations is the installation of composting toilets, after due consideration of local cultural sensitivities. . .

The publisher apologises for these errors.

Against the backdrop of the competing demands of agricultural productivity and biodiversity conservation, understanding land-use changes is critical. We studied the past, current and future landscape–dynamic scenarios for coffee and rice-coupled crops at a village scale in the Western Ghats (southern India) by integrating three levels of organization (patch, farm and soils). The village structures and dynamics from 1950 to 2010 were modelled with the Dynamic Patch Landscape (DYPAL) modelling platform and analysed with Comparison Map Profile (CMP) spatial analysis in order to assess environmental trends. Our model, combined with mathematical formalizations and multiscale analyses, was also used to project future land-use sustainability. Our findings highlight significant environmental issues affecting the Western Ghats biodiversity hotspot, which is also subject to increasing and differential demands for other crops that are dependent on farm production systems. Intensive coffee cultivation, with conversion of the forest cover into Grevillea robusta monoculture and ongoing paddy abandonment, have had a strong impact on the region's landscape (+30% G. robusta) and biodiversity (from –3% to –13% in the already-reduced forest cover).

When timber harvesting is an important source of local income and forest resources are declining, even forests that are designated as protected areas may become vulnerable. Therefore, regular monitoring of forest disturbance is necessary to enforce the protection of forest ecosystems. However, mapping forest disturbance with satellite imagery can be complicated if the majority of the harvesting is selective logging and not clearcuts. Our goal was to map both selective logging and clearcuts within and outside of protected areas in Western Siberia, a region with a highly developed timber industry. Combining summer and winter imagery allowed us to accurately estimate not only clearcuts, but also selective logging. Winter Landsat images substantially improved our classification and resulted in a highly accurate forest disturbance map (97.5% overall accuracy and 86% user accuracy for the rarest class, clearcuts). Selective logging and stripcuts were the dominant disturbance types, accounting for 96.3% of all forest disturbances, versus 3.7% for clearcuts. The total annual forest disturbance rate (i.e. disturbance rate for clearcuts, stripcuts and selective logging together) was 0.53%, but total forest disturbance within protected areas was greater than in non-protected forest (0.66% versus 0.50%, respectively), and so was the annual rate of selective logging (i.e. without clearcuts, 0.37% versus 0.25%, respectively). Our results highlight that monitoring only clearcuts without assessing selective logging might result in significant underestimation of forest disturbance. Also, when timber harvesting is important for the local economy and when protected areas have valuable timber resources that have already been depleted elsewhere, then additional protection may be necessary in order to maintain natural forests within protected areas. We suggest that this is the situation in our study area in Western Siberia right now and is likely the situation in many other parts of the globe as well.