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
Iron Status of Vegans, Vegetarians and Pescatarians in Norway.
Sigrun Henjum,Synne Groufh-Jacobsen,Tonje Holte Stea,Live Edvardsen Tonheim,Kari Almendingen +4 more
TL;DR: Although the participants were eating a plant-based diet, the majority had sufficient iron status, and female vegans and vegetarians of reproductive age are at risk of low iron status and should have their iron status monitored.
Journal ArticleDOI
Comparison of animal biodiversity in three livestock systems of open environments of the semi-arid Chaco of Argentina
Sofía Marinaro,Ricardo Grau +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors compared three open-canopy livestock-producing systems in the semi-arid Argentinian Chaco: natural grasslands, sown non-native pastures and silvopastoral systems.
Journal ArticleDOI
Characterizing and monitoring global landscapes using GlobeLand30 datasets: the first decade of the twenty-first century
TL;DR: This paper presents a meta-modelling system that automates the very labor-intensive and therefore time-heavy and expensive and therefore expensive and expensive process of manually drawing and plotting global land cover maps.
Journal ArticleDOI
Mammal Diversity in Oil Palm Plantations and Forest Fragments in a Highly Modified Landscape in Southern Mexico
Jessie L. Knowlton,Ena Edith Mata Zayas,Andres J. Ripley,Bertha Valenzuela-Cordova,Ricardo Alberto Collado-Torres +4 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used a camera trapping survey to compare species richness, community structure and relative abundances of mid to large-bodied terrestrial mammals in small-scale oil palm plantations and secondary forest fragments within a highly modified landscape mosaic in the southeastern lowlands of Tabasco, Mexico.
Journal ArticleDOI
Expansion of the agricultural frontier in the largest South American Dry Forest: identifying priority conservation areas for snakes before everything is lost.
María Soledad Andrade-Díaz,Juan Andrés Sarquis,Bette A. Loiselle,Alejandro Raul Giraudo,Alejandro Raul Giraudo,Juan Manuel Díaz-Gómez +5 more
TL;DR: It is argued that consultation with stakeholders and decision-makers are urgently needed in order to take concrete actions to protect the habitat, or the authors risk losing the best conservation opportunities to protect endemic snakes that inhabit the Argentinian Dry Chaco.
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.