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
Spider Monkeys in Human-Modified Landscapes: The Importance of the Matrix
Víctor Arroyo-Rodríguez,Gloria Karina Pérez-Elissetche,José D. Ordóñez-Gómez,Arturo González-Zamora,Óscar M. Chaves,Sónia Sánchez-López,Colin A. Chapman,Karenina Morales-Hernández,Miriam Pablo-Rodríguez,Gabriel Ramos-Fernández +9 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors assessed the use of the landscape matrix by spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) in 13 forest sites from three countries (Mexico, Costa Rica, and El Salvador).
Journal ArticleDOI
Towards integrated ecological research in tropical montane cloud forests
TL;DR: A new international initiative, CloudNet, that aims to promote integrated research across TMCFs is outlined, and a special issue is introduced that reviews emerging themes and topics in the ecology of TMCF, highlighting knowledge gaps and suggesting new directions for research.
Journal ArticleDOI
Good news from Latin America and the Caribbean: national and international restoration networks are moving ahead
Cristian Echeverría,Cecilia Smith-Ramírez,James Aronson,James Aronson,José Ignacio Barrera-Cataño +4 more
TL;DR: The Ibero-American and Caribbean Society for Ecological Restoration (SIACRE) as discussed by the authors organized the first national seminar on ecological restoration in Chile, with participants representing both academic and non-academic sectors.
Journal ArticleDOI
Deep Learning for Regular Change Detection in Ukrainian Forest Ecosystem With Sentinel-2
TL;DR: A baseline U-Net model for deforestation detection in the forest-steppe zone of Ukraine is presented and the ability to use several sequential images as an input of the segmentation model is improved.
Journal ArticleDOI
Tree biomass and carbon stock: understanding the role of species richness, elevation, and disturbance
TL;DR: In this paper, six elevation zones viz., MHF 1 to MHF 6 (Mahendragiri Hill Forest) starting from 229 to > 1505m asl were assessed to estimate the biomass and carbon stock in tropical dry deciduous forests of Mahendradiri Hills, Eastern Ghats.
References
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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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Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World: A New Map of Life on Earth
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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.
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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.