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
Innovations for a sustainable future: rising to the challenge of nitrogen greenhouse gas management in Latin America
Mercedes M. C. Bustamante,Luiz Antonio Martinelli,Jean Pierre Henry Balbaud Ometto,Janaina Braga do Carmo,Víctor J. Jaramillo,Mayra E. Gavito,Patricia I. Araujo,Amy T. Austin,Tibisay Pérez,Sorena Marquina +9 more
TL;DR: In this paper, a sustainable management for the mitigation of N2O emissions requires the proper evaluation of all sources, many of which are still roughly estimated or unknown, testing alternatives to reduce primary sources, and technological innovation for higher resource use efficiency within the farm.
Dissertation
Deforestation, agricultural intensification, and farm resilience in Northern Belize: 1980-2010
TL;DR: In this paper, a bottom-up approach that focuses on farm-level decisions is proposed to mitigate global environmental and social problems, arguing that the decisions of approximately 65 million smallholders contribute significantly to the processes of global climate change, local environmental change, and a variety of social problems relating to food security, poverty, urban growth, and, at times, armed conflict and genocide.
Journal ArticleDOI
Environmental, land cover and land use constraints on the distributional patterns of anurans: Leptodacylus species (Anura, Leptodactylidae) from Dry Chaco
TL;DR: It is found that temperature seasonality is the main constraint to the occurrence of the species studied, whose main habitats are savannas, grasslands and croplands.
Journal ArticleDOI
Species Diversity, Distribution, and Conservation Status in a Mesoamerican Region: Amphibians of the Uxpanapa-Chimalapas Region, Mexico
TL;DR: The Uxpanapa-Chimalapas region, with one of the most extensive and best preserved tropical forest areas in Mexico, is undergoing major anthropogenic changes as discussed by the authors.
Journal ArticleDOI
Sparing land for secondary forest regeneration protects more tropical biodiversity than land sharing in cattle farming landscapes
Felicity A. Edwards,Mike R. Massam,Cindy C.P. Cosset,Patrick G. Cannon,Torbjørn Haugaasen,James J. Gilroy,David Edwards +6 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the outcomes of secondary sparing and land sharing via simulated scenarios that maintained constant landscape-wide production and equal within-pasture yield: (1) for species and functional diversity of dung beetles and birds; (2) for avian phylogenetic diversity; and (3) across different stages of secondary forest regeneration, relative to spared primary forests.
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.