Effects of the Surrounding Matrix on Tree Recruitment in Amazonian Forest Fragments

Abstract:  Little is known about how the surrounding modified matrix affects tree recruitment in fragmented forests. We contrasted effects of two different matrix types, Vismia - and Cecropia -dominated regrowth, on recruitment of pioneer tree species in forest fragments in central Amazonia. Our analyses were based on 22, 1-ha plots in seven experimental forest fragments ranging in size from 1 to 100 ha. By 13 to 17 years after fragmentation, the population density of pioneer trees was significantly higher in plots surrounded by Vismia regrowth than in plots surrounded by Cecropia regrowth, and the species composition and dominance of pioneers differed markedly between the two matrix types. Cecropia sciadophylla was the most abundant pioneer in fragments surrounded by Cecropia regrowth (constituting nearly 50% of all pioneer trees), whereas densities of species in Vismia -surrounded fragments were distributed more evenly. Thus the surrounding matrix had a strong influence on patterns of tree recruitment in Amazonian forest fragments.     

Land use issues in biomass energy planning

Land availability is a key consideration for evaluating the potential of biomass energy. This depends not only on how much land is physically suitable for growing the biomass crop, but also on the environmental implications of an energy farm and the extent to which land can be freed from competing uses. Energy planning should include inventories to realistically assess the amount of land potentially available for biomass production and the trade-offs involved in using such land for biomass farms.     

Spatial interactions in habitat conservation: Evidence from prairie pothole easements

We examine the role of spatial interactions in conservation easements placed on prairie pothole habitat in western Canada. One of the goals of the conservation easement program we study is to protect contiguous habitat. We identify endogenous spatial interactions among conservation easements and government protected land, independent of spatially correlated landscape features and local economic shocks that influence easement enrollment. We present evidence that easements increase the likelihood of subsequent easements on neighboring land. Government-protected land appears to have little effect on the location of conservation easements. These results imply that conservation agencies have leveraged past conservation investment to enroll more contiguous habitat in permanent easements through a combination of targeting and positive social interactions among neighboring landowners.     

A regression tree-based method for integrating land-cover and land-use data collected at multiple scales

As data sets of multiple types and scales proliferate, it will be increasingly important to be able to flexibly combine them in ways that retain relevant information. A case in point is Amazonia, a large, data-poor region where most whole-basin data sets are limited to understanding land cover interpreted through a variety of remote sensing techniques and sensors. A growing body of work, however, indicates that the future state of much of Amazonia depends on the land use to which converted areas are put, but land use in the tropics is difficult to assess from remotely sensed data alone. An earlier paper developed new snapshots of agricultural land use in this region using a statistical fusion of satellite data and agricultural census data, an underutilized ancillary data source available across Amazonia. The creation of these land-use maps, which have the spatial detail of a satellite image and the attribute information of an agricultural census, required the development of a new statistical technique for merging data sets at different scales and of fundamentally different data types. Here we describe and assess this nonlinear technique, which reinterprets existing land cover classifications by determining what categories are most highly related to the polygon land-use data across the study area. Although developed for this region, the technique appears to hold broad promise for the systematic fusion of multiple data sets that are closely related but of different origins. The figures in the printed version of this article appear in black and white. Color figures are available from the author upon request.     

Differentiated impacts of environmental policies on the Colombian Frontier: coercive conservation and containment of illicit activities in the Pacific and the Ariari region

ABSTRACT

This article, through the use of political ecology perspectives on coercive conservation, aims to explain how in two separate Colombian Natural Parks and buffer zones, environmental policies designed to (re)take control of the frontier, have produced a similar territorial differentiation in the contention of illicit activities. Los Farallones in the Colombian Pacific and La Macarena/Puerto Rico in the Ariari region have experienced different stages of the armed conflict and are at the center of this analysis. I argue that in the contexts of both conflict escalation (1998–2007) and conflict de-escalation (2008–2016), the State in its attempt to control the frontier has not only had military intervention in areas of conservation but has also reinforced environmental programs that attack illegal mining and coca, producing both a territorially differentiated containment of illicit activities and an uneven progression of the illicit frontier.     

Studying crop sequences with CarrotAge,a HMM-based data mining software

We have developed a knowledge discovery system based on high-order hidden Markov models for analyzing spatio-temporal data bases. This system, named CarrotAge , takes as input an array of discrete data – the rows represent the spatial sites and the columns the time slots – and builds a partition together with its a posteriori probability. CarrotAge has been developed for studying the cropping patterns of a territory. It uses therefore an agricultural drench database, named Ter-Uti , which records every year the land-use category of a set of sites regularly spaced. The results of CarrotAge are interpreted by agronomists and used in research works linking agricultural land use and water management. Moreover, CarrotAge can be used to find out and study crop sequences in large territories, that is a main question for agricultural and environmental research, as discussed in this paper.     

广东土地退化及治理对策

本文概述土地退化的原因和状况。通过对广东山区土壤和东江流域低产耕地的大批土壤剖面分析数据的统计和推算,结果表明,广东的林地退化面积约占全省陆地面积的35％;旱地土地退化面积占全省旱地总面积的95％;水田土地退化面积约占全省水田总面积的25％。根据广东的省情,提出土地退化治理的对策:提高认识,增加投入,组织力量,开展调查摸底;制订整体治理规划,分步实施;明确治理的中心任务,推进面上治理利用,加强研究工作。