Sustainable management of the Gran Chaco of South America: Ecological promise and economic constraints
TL;DR: A management system for the sustainable use of the Gran Chaco has been developed based on a multiple-species ranching system that includes beef, timber, charcoal and wildlife production as mentioned in this paper.
About: This article is published in Journal of Environmental Management.The article was published on 1999-10-01. It has received 108 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Sustainable management & Overgrazing.
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors focused on the north-west boundary of the Argentine Semi-arid Chaco, where soybean is the most important crop and found that between 1972 and 2001, 588 900 ha (c. 20% of the forests) were deforested.
Abstract: In Argentina, deforestation due to agriculture expansion is threatening the Semi-arid Chaco, one of the largest forested biomes of South America. This study focuses on the north-west boundary of the Argentine Semi-arid Chaco, where soybean is the most important crop. Deforestation was estimated for areas with different levels of soil and rainfall limitation for agriculture between 1972 and 2001, with a finer analysis in three periods starting in 1984, which are characterized by differences in rainfall, soybean price, production cost, technology-driven yield and national gross domestic product. Between 1972 and 2001, 588 900 ha (c. 20% of the forests) were deforested. Deforestation has been accelerating, reaching >28 000 ha yr−1 after 1997. The initial deforestation was associated with black bean cultivation following an increase in rainfall during the 1970s. In the 1980s, high soybean prices stimulated further deforestation. Finally, the introduction of soybean transgenic cultivars in 1997 reduced plantation costs and stimulated a further increase in deforestation. The domestic economy had little association with deforestation. Although deforestation was more intense in the moister (rainfall >600 mm yr−1) areas, more than 300 000 ha have already been deforested in the drier areas, suggesting that climatic limitations are being overcome by technological and genetic improvement. Furthermore, more than 300 000 ha of forest occur in sectors without major soil and rainfall limitations. If global trends of technology, soybean markets and climate continue, and no active conservation policies are applied, vast areas of the Chaco will be deforested in the coming decades.
257 citations
Cites background from "Sustainable management of the Gran ..."
...The eastern ‘Humid Chaco’ has been intensively transformed into agriculture, while the western ‘Semi-arid Chaco’ has remained largely forested because, despite high soil fertility and flat terrain, rain fed agriculture was historically unprofitable ( Bucher & Huszar 1999 )....
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...The eastern ‘Humid Chaco’ has been intensively transformed into agriculture, while the western ‘Semi-arid Chaco’ has remained largely forested because, despite high soil fertility and flat terrain, rain fed agriculture was historically unprofitable (Bucher & Huszar 1999)....
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TL;DR: The long-term effects of interventions in rural villages in northern Argentina during 1984-2006 strongly reduced domestic infestation and infection with Trypanosoma cruzi in Triatoma infestans bugs and dogs and more gradually reduced the seroprevalence of children <15 years of age.
Abstract: Chagas disease remains a serious obstacle to health and economic development in Latin America, especially for the rural poor. We report the long-term effects of interventions in rural villages in northern Argentina during 1984-2006. Two community-wide campaigns of residual insecticide spraying immediately and strongly reduced domestic infestation and infection with Trypanosoma cruzi in Triatoma infestans bugs and dogs and more gradually reduced the seroprevalence of children <15 years of age. Because no effective surveillance and control actions followed the first campaign in 1985, transmission resurged in 2-3 years. Renewed interventions in 1992 followed by sustained, supervised, community-based vector control largely suppressed the reestablishment of domestic bug colonies and finally led to the interruption of local human T. cruzi transmission. Human incidence of infection was nearly an order of magnitude higher in peripheral rural areas under pulsed, unsupervised, community-based interventions, where human transmission became apparent in 2000. The sustained, supervised, community-based strategy nearly interrupted domestic transmission to dogs but did not eliminate T. infestans despite the absence of pyrethroid-insecticide resistance. T. infestans persisted in part because of the lack of major changes in housing construction and quality. Sustained community participation grew out of establishing a trusted relationship with the affected communities and the local schools. The process included health promotion and community mobilization, motivation, and supervision in close cooperation with locally nominated leaders.
233 citations
01 May 2015
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors studied the effects of land use and land cover change on the local and regional climate in non-Amazonian regions. And they found that 3.6 million km2 of the original natural vegetation cover in non Amazonian South America were converted into other types of land uses, which is about 4 times greater than the historical Amazon deforestation.
Abstract: Land use and land cover change (LUCC) affects regional climate through modifications in the water balance and energy budget. These impacts are frequently expressed by: changes in the amount and frequency of precipitation and alteration of surface temperatures. In South America, most of the studies of the effects of LUCC on the local and regional climate have focused on the Amazon region (54 studies), whereas LUCC within non-Amazonian regions have been largely undermined regardless their potential importance in regulating the regional climate (19 studies). We estimated that 3.6 million km2 of the original natural vegetation cover in non-Amazonian South America were converted into other types of land use, which is about 4 times greater than the historical Amazon deforestation. Moreover, there is evidence showing that LUCC within such fairly neglected ecosystems cause significant reductions in precipitation and increases in surface temperatures, with occasional impacts affecting neighboring or remote areas. We explore the implications of these findings in the context of water security, climatic extremes and future research priorities.
183 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a comprehensive assessment of Paraguay's forest cover change from the 1970s to the 2000s using Landsat observations was conducted, including a wall-to-wall mapping of changes across the whole country between the 1990s and 2000s, and an assessment of forest area in the Atlantic Forest ecoregion using a systematic sampling approach.
183 citations
TL;DR: The authors used panel regressions at the district level to quantify the role of soybean expansion in driving these forest losses using a wide range of environmental and socio-economic control variables, finding that soybean production was a direct driver of deforestation in the Argentine Chaco only, whereas cattle ranching was significantly associated with deforestation in all three countries (0.02 additional cattle per hectare forest loss).
Abstract: South America’s tropical dry forests and savannas are under increasing pressure from agricultural expansion. Cattle ranching and soybean production both drive these forest losses, but their relative importance remains unclear. Also unclear is how soybean expansion elsewhere affects deforestation via pushing cattle ranching to deforestation frontiers. To assess these questions, we focused on the Chaco, a 110 million ha ecoregion extending into Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay, with about 8 million ha of deforestation in 2000–2012. We used panel regressions at the district level to quantify the role of soybean expansion in driving these forest losses using a wide range of environmental and socio-economic control variables. Our models suggest that soybean production was a direct driver of deforestation in the Argentine Chaco only (0.08 ha new soybean area per ha forest lost), whereas cattle ranching was significantly associated with deforestation in all three countries (0.02 additional cattle per hectare forest loss). However, our models also suggested Argentine soybean cultivation may indirectly be linked to deforestation in the Bolivian and Paraguayan Chaco. We furthermore found substantial time-delayed effects in the relationship of soybean expansion in Argentina and Paraguay (i.e., soybean expansion in one year resulted in deforestation several years later) and deforestation in the Chaco, further suggesting that possible displacement effects within and between Chaco countries may at least partly drive forest loss. Altogether, our study showed that deforestation in the Chaco appears to be mainly driven by the globally surging demand for soybean, although regionally other proximate drivers are sometimes important. Steering agricultural production in the Chaco and other tropical dry forests onto sustainable pathways will thus require policies that consider these scale effects and that account for the regional variation in deforestation drivers within and across countries.
164 citations
References
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TL;DR: Elliott et al. as mentioned in this paper used a systems approach to understand the controls on stability and persistence of a pastoral ecosystem in East Africa, and used this approach to support the development of agricultural research programs.
Abstract: JIM ELLIS took undergraduate work in animal husbandry at the University of Missouri and also obtained his Master of Science degree there studying wildlife biology. In 1970, he received his Ph.D. in Zoology at the University of California at Davis, where he was a National Institute of Health trainee in systems ecology. Shortly thereafter, he held a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Bristol working on systems analysis of mammalian social systems. He joined the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory of Colorado State University as a Research Ecologist in 1971. He is currently the Associate Director of the Laboratory. Jim has enjoyed immense success in developing research programs; during the last decade he directed or played a major role in 12 successful proposals, collectively exceeding three milliondollaninsuppott. He has publishedextensively, withmost of his work focussing on processes regulatinggrazing systems. Jim has served as a consultant to the U.S. Senate, as well as the govcmmcnt of Saudi Arabia and the Norwegian Agency for International Development. His must recent project uses a systems approach to understand the controls on stability and persistence of a pastoral ecosystem in East Africa.
1,188 citations
01 Jan 1982
TL;DR: The diagonal of open formations as mentioned in this paper is a corridor of open vegetation formations from north-eastern Brazil to central-north Argentina that allows access and transconnection of xeric areas from the west, north-west and south (Monte Desert, Andean shrub formations and Patagonian Desert).
Abstract: From north-eastern Brazil to central-north Argentina there is a corridor of open vegetation formations called “the diagonal of open formations” by Vanzolini (1974). Two dry woodland areas, the “caatinga” in north-eastern Brazil and the “chaco” in northern Argentina, are isolated by a savanna corridor, sandwiched between the coastal and Amazonian rain forests, known as “cerrado” or “campos cerrados”. Through the chaco this diagonal of open formations affords access and transconnection of xeric areas from the west, north-west and south (Monte Desert, Andean shrub formations and Patagonian Desert, Figure 1).
204 citations
TL;DR: The broad belt of savanna-like vegetation in central South America has suffered an accelerating decline in productivity due to overclearing and overgrazing, a process that can be traced directly to the industrialization of Europe in the 19th century.
Abstract: Degradation of tropical lands has a grim inevitability. This is true of semi-arid and seasonal ecosystems as it is of the rainforests, whose plight has been the principal focus of attention in recent years. The broad belt of savanna-like vegetation in central South America has suffered an accelerating decline in productivity due to overclearing and overgrazing, a process that can be traced directly to the industrialization of Europe in the 19th century. The remorseless slide towards unproductivity need not be slow: a mere 50-100 years seems more than adequate, even for the more robust landscapes. With careful management however, some of these lands are slowly recovering.
63 citations