Browsing by Subject "deforestation"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Deforestation risks posed by oil palm expansion in the Peruvian Amazon
    (Environmental Research Letters, 2018-11-01) Vijay, V; Reid, CD; Finer, M; Jenkins, CN; Pimm, SL
    Further expansion of agriculture in the tropics is likely to accelerate the loss of biodiversity. One crop of concern to conservation is African oil palm (Elaeis guineensis). We examined recent deforestation associated with oil palm in the Peruvian Amazon within the context of the region's other crops. We found more area under oil palm cultivation (845 km2) than did previous studies. While this comprises less than 4% of the cropland in the region, it accounted for 11% of the deforestation from agricultural expansion from 2007-2013. Patches of oil palm agriculture were larger and more spatially clustered than for other crops, potentially increasing their impact on local habitat fragmentation. Modeling deforestation risk for oil palm expansion using climatic and edaphic factors showed that sites at lower elevations, with higher precipitation, and lower slopes than those typically used for intensive agriculture are at long-term risk of deforestation from oil palm agriculture. Within areas at long-term risks, based on CART models, areas near urban centers, roads, and previously deforested areas are at greatest short-term risk of deforestation. Existing protected areas and officially recognized indigenous territories cover large areas at long-term risk of deforestation for oil palm (>40%). Less than 7% of these areas are under strict (IUCN I-IV) protection. Based on these findings, we suggest targeted monitoring for oil palm deforestation as well as strengthening and expanding protected areas to conserve specific habitats.
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    Representation of Global and National Conservation Priorities by Colombia's Protected Area Network
    (2010) Forero-Medina, German; Joppa, Lucas
    Background: How do national-level actions overlap with global priorities for conservation? Answering this question is especially important in countries with high and unique biological diversity like Colombia. Global biodiversity schemes provide conservation guidance at a large scale, while national governments gazette land for protection based on a combination of criteria at regional or local scales. Information on how a protected area network represents global and national conservation priorities is crucial for finding gaps in coverage and for future expansion of the system. Methodology/Principal Findings: We evaluated the agreement of Colombia's protected area network with global conservation priorities, and the extent to which the network reflects the country's biomes, species richness, and common environmental and physical conditions. We used this information to identify priority biomes for conservation. We find the dominant strategy in Colombia has been a proactive one, allocating the highest proportion of protected land on intact, difficult to access and species rich areas like the Amazon. Threatened and unique areas are disproportionately absent from Colombia's protected lands. We highlight six biomes in Colombia as conservation priorities that should be considered in any future expansion of Colombia's protected area network. Two of these biomes have less than 3% of their area protected and more than 70% of their area transformed for human use. One has less than 3% protected and high numbers of threatened vertebrates. Three biomes fall in both categories. Conclusions: Expansion of Colombia's Protected Area Network should consider the current representativeness of the network. We indicate six priority biomes that can contribute to improving the representation of threatened species and biomes in Colombia.
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    Spatial patterns of market participation and resource extraction: Fuelwood collection in Northern Uganda
    (American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2017-07-01) Miteva, DA; Kramer, RA; Brown, ZS; Smith, MD
    While distance to markets is a key determinant of market participation for households that are dependent on natural resources, the distance to the resource stock is also essential. Thus, a household's location with respect to markets and the resource stock determines household market participation and associated resource degradation. Applying a discrete-choice framework for fuelwood collection in a developing country, we characterize the spatial pattern of market participation regimes and forest use. All else being equal, autarkic households are closest to the forest and furthest from the market, buyer households are closest to the market and furthest from the forest, and seller households are at intermediate distances. Empirical tests based on survey data from northern Uganda support the predictions from our theoretical model. Our findings have important implications for understanding the spatial patterns of forest degradation and determining the control group when designing impact evaluations of the effectiveness of development and conservation interventions.