Effect of canal blocking on biodiversity of degraded peatlands: Insight from West Kalimantan

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0334014 October 8, 2025 10 / 23 A high number of individual and species counts from saplings were recorded in disturbed and less disturbed peat for- ests. In forested areas, we found a smaller number of understory individuals compared to what we found in estate crops and disturbed wet shrub areas. Consistent across all growth phases of trees, less disturbed peat forests have higher total individual and species counts compared to disturbed peat forests. However, compared to disturbed peat forests, the less disturbed peat forest has fewer total individual and species in the understory. Forest areas also harbour more Critically Endangered plant species compared to non-forest areas such as Gonysty- lus bancanus and Shorea platycarpa, and Endangered species Shorea teysmanniana, as well as protected species, i.e., Koompassia malaccensis and Nepenthes bicalcarata, and endemic species. Between forested areas, less disturbed forest has more critically endangered and protected species than disturbed forest. However, disturbed peat forest also has more endemic plant species and Conservation Dependent species. The non-forested areas on the other hand, harbor fewer plant species and zero high-risk plant species, except for one Near Threatened species, i.e., Aglaia rubiginosa. Despite having lower plant diversity, non-forested area still provides great amount of ground cover. Fig 5. Pairwise results from LMM of acoustic indices. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0334014.g005

Fig 6. Linear mixed model with acoustic indices as predictors and rows as explanatory variables. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0334014.g006