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
The cost of restoring carbon stocks in Brazil's Atlantic Forest
Pedro H. S. Brancalion,Joannès Guillemot,Joannès Guillemot,Ricardo Gomes César,Henrique Sverzut Freire de Andrade,Alex Mendes,Taísi B. Sorrini,Marisa de Cássia Piccolo,Marina C. Peluci,Vanessa de Souza Moreno,Gabriel Dalla Colletta,Robin L. Chazdon,Robin L. Chazdon,Robin L. Chazdon +13 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors assessed the recovery of carbon stocks, implementation and land opportunity costs of forests established by natural regeneration and high-diversity native tree plantations in Brazil's Atlantic Forest.
Journal ArticleDOI
The effects of tropical secondary forest regeneration on avian phylogenetic diversity
TL;DR: This article investigated the effects of secondary forest regeneration on phylogenetic diversity (PD) in birds and found that the regeneration of secondary forests could lead to a community of closely related species, despite maintaining comparable SR to primary forests, and thus have diminished biodiversity value with reduced evolutionary heritage.
Journal ArticleDOI
The impact of secondary forest regeneration on ground-dwelling ant communities in the Tropical Andes
Matthew G. Hethcoat,Bethany J. King,Fernando Fernández Castiblanco,Claudia M. Ortiz-Sepúlveda,Fabian Camilo Prada Achiardi,Felicity A. Edwards,Claudia A. Medina,James J. Gilroy,Torbjørn Haugaasen,David Edwards +9 more
TL;DR: It is found that over time ant community composition and species richness recovered towards that of primary forest, however, these relationships are strongly dependent on elevation with the more open and warmer pasturelands supporting more ants than either primary or secondary forest at a particular elevation.
Posted Content
Neighborhood effects in the Brazilian Amazônia: Protected areas and deforestation
Ariane Manuela Amin,Johanna Choumert-Nkolo,Jean-Louis Combes,Pascale Combes Motel,Eric Nazindigouba Kere,Jean-Galbert Ongono-Olinga,Sonia Schwartz +6 more
TL;DR: In this paper, a dynamic spatial Durbin model is used to assess the impact of different types of protected areas (integral protected areas, sustainable protected areas and indigenous lands) on deforestation.
Journal ArticleDOI
Predicting of biomass in Brazilian tropical dry forest: a statistical evaluation of generic equations.
Robson Borges de Lima,Francisco Tarcísio Alves Junior,Cinthia Pereira de Oliveira,José Antônio Aleixo da Silva,Rinaldo Luiz Caraciolo Ferreira +4 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the capacity of generic and specific equations obtained from different locations in Mexico and Brazil, to estimate aboveground biomass at multi-species levels and for four different species.
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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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.