Journal ArticleDOI
Deforestation and Reforestation of Latin America and the Caribbean (2001–2010)
T. Mitchell Aide,Matthew L. Clark,H. Ricardo Grau,David López-Carr,Marc A. Levy,Daniel J. Redo,Martha Bonilla-Moheno,George Riner,María José Andrade-Núñez,Maria Muñiz +9 more
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TLDR
In this paper, the authors presented a wall-to-wall, annual maps of change in woody vegetation and other land-cover classes between 2001 and 2010 for each of the 16,050 municipalities in Latin American and the Caribbean region (LAC).Abstract:
Forest cover change directly affects biodiversity, the global carbon budget, and ecosystem function. Within Latin American and the Caribbean region (LAC), many studies have documented extensive deforestation, but there are also many local studies reporting forest recovery. These contrasting dynamics have been largely attributed to demographic and socio-economic change. For example, local population change due to migration can stimulate forest recovery, while the increasing global demand for food can drive agriculture expansion. However, as no analysis has simultaneously evaluated deforestation and reforestation from the municipal to continental scale, we lack a comprehensive assessment of the spatial distribution of these processes. We overcame this limitation by producing wall-to-wall, annual maps of change in woody vegetation and other land-cover classes between 2001 and 2010 for each of the 16,050 municipalities in LAC, and we used nonparametric Random Forest regression analyses to determine which environmental or population variables best explained the variation in woody vegetation change. Woody vegetation change was dominated by deforestation (541,835 km 2 ), particularly in the moist forest, dry forest, and savannas/shrublands biomes in South America. Extensive areas also recovered woody vegetation (+362,430 km 2 ), particularly in regions too dry or too steep for modern agriculture. Deforestation in moist forests tended to occur in lowland areas with low population density, but woody cover change was not related to municipality-scale population change. These results emphasize the importance of quantitating deforestation and reforestation at multiple spatial scales and linking these changes with global drivers such as the global demand for food.read more
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Journal ArticleDOI
Response of dung beetle taxonomic and functional diversity to livestock grazing in an arid ecosystem
TL;DR: In this article, the authors compared the taxonomic and functional response of dung beetles to two different livestock managements with different conservation of tree cover (open pastures and silvopastoral systems) in the Dry Chaco.
Book ChapterDOI
Energy and Environmental Security—Latin America’s Balancing Challenge
Kankana Dubey,J. Andrew Howe +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the energy and environmental security challenges faced by Latin America and present several possible risk mitigation strategies through which a country (either importing or exporting) can secure energy supply and promote measures to protect the local environment.
Journal Article
Contribution of Dusun Agroforestry to Household Income on Ambon Island, Indonesia
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyzed the contribution value of dusun agroforestry to the total income and the fulfillment of the minimum standard of physical needs (KFM) and standard requirement for a decent living (KHL) of the households of Dusun owners.
Ecological Succession in Tropical Forests: The Role of Edaphic Factors, Initial Conditions and Competition
TL;DR: Villegas et al. as mentioned in this paper used census data from a young tropical dry forest and a large-scale field experiment in a tropical moist forest to examine the combined effects of edaphic factors and initial conditions on forest succession, as well as the effect of lianas on trees, an intense form of plant competition, on tropical forest succession.
Journal ArticleDOI
Successional shifts in tree demographic strategies in wet and dry Neotropical forests
Nadja Rüger,Stephan Kambach,Robin L. Chazdon,Caroline E. Farrior,Jorge A. Meave,Rodrigo Muñoz,Michiel van Breugel,Lucy Amissah,Frans Bongers,Dylan Craven,Bruno Hérault,Catarina C. Jakovac,Natalia Norden,Lourens Poorter,Masha T. van der Sande,Christian Wirth,Diego Delgado,Daisy H. Dent,Saara J. DeWalt,Juan Manuel Dupuy,Bryan Finegan,Jefferson S. Hall,José Luis Hernández-Stefanoni,Omar R. Lopez +23 more
TL;DR: In this article , the authors identify generalities in demographic trade-offs and successional shifts in demographic strategies across Neotropical forests that cover a large rainfall gradient and to test whether the current conceptual model of tropical forest succession applies to wet and dry forests.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Random Forests
TL;DR: Internal estimates monitor error, strength, and correlation and these are used to show the response to increasing the number of features used in the forest, and are also applicable to regression.
Journal ArticleDOI
Overview of the radiometric and biophysical performance of the MODIS vegetation indices
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors evaluated the performance and validity of the MODIS vegetation indices (VI), the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and enhanced vegetation index(EVI), produced at 1-km and 500-m resolutions and 16-day compositing periods.
Journal ArticleDOI
Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World: A New Map of Life on Earth
Journal ArticleDOI
Random forest: a classification and regression tool for compound classification and QSAR modeling.
Vladimir Svetnik,Andy Liaw,Christopher Tong,J. Christopher Culberson,Robert P. Sheridan,Bradley P. Feuston +5 more
TL;DR: It is the combination of relatively high prediction accuracy and its collection of desired features that makes Random Forest uniquely suited for modeling in cheminformatics.
Journal ArticleDOI
Dynamics of Land-Use and Land-Cover Change in Tropical Regions
TL;DR: In this article, the authors highlight the complexity of land-use/cover change and propose a framework for a more general understanding of the issue, with emphasis on tropical regions, and argue that a systematic analysis of local-scale land use change studies, conducted over a range of timescales, helps to uncover general principles that provide an explanation and prediction of new land use changes.