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Deforestation and Reforestation of Latin America and the Caribbean (2001–2010)

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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.

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Citations
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Land Cover Characterization and Mapping of South America for the Year 2010 Using Landsat 30 m Satellite Data

TL;DR: This study used Landsat 30 m satellite data of 2010 and prepared the land cover database of South America using state-of-the-science remote sensing techniques and produced regionally consistent and locally relevant land cover information by processing a large volume of data covering the entire continent.
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Influences of population pressure change on vegetation greenness in China's mountainous areas

TL;DR: The results indicate that the vegetation index in the past 10 years has presented an increasing overall trend, albeit with local decrease in some regions, as well as controlling the natural elements such as climatic and landform factors.
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Secondary Forest and Shrubland Dynamics in a Highly Transformed Landscape in the Northern Andes of Colombia (1985–2015)

TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyzed secondary forest and shrubland dynamics over 30 years (1985-2015) in a densely populated area of the Colombian Andes using satellite and biophysical data.
Journal ArticleDOI

A Tree-Based Approach to Biomass Estimation from Remote Sensing Data in a Tropical Agricultural Landscape

TL;DR: In this article, a tree-based method was proposed to estimate the above ground biomass (AGB) and carbon in tropical agricultural landscape using high-resolution (1.12m) airborne LiDAR data collected on a 9280ha region of the Azuero Peninsula of Panama.
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Edaphic factors and initial conditions influence successional trajectories of early regenerating tropical dry forests

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors studied how tree and liana species composition change early in succession, as well as how edaphic factors (soil nutrients and topography) and initial conditions (initial basal area and forest canopy cover) influence changes in tree abundance, species richness, biomass and composition throughout succession.
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.
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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.
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Random forest: a classification and regression tool for compound classification and QSAR modeling.

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.
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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.
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