We applied a participatory mapping approach supported by very high-resolution satellite imagery to reconstruct spatially explicit, year-to-year land use transitions in two highly biodiverse, data-scarce forest frontier landscapes in northeastern Madagascar. We explored these transitions in the light of major continuous trends and discrete events highlighted by local farmers as influencing their land use decisions. Our results suggest that the process of establishing protected areas first reinforced ongoing deforestation, but later led to a significant reduction of forest loss rates. Recent cash crop booms appear to have induced agricultural intensification processes in our study landscapes, while also putting additional pressure on forests, as people may be encouraged to clear forest for cash crop cultivation. These findings are crucial to understanding rapid land use change processes in forest frontier contexts in the humid tropics, and especially to informing natural resource governance and development initiatives in complex mosaic landscapes.

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1. Tropical forest frontier areas support the well-being of local populations in myriad ways. Not only do they provide the material basis for people's livelihoods, they also sustain socio-cultural foundations through relational values.They host some of the most biodiverse ecosystems and largest carbon stocks on the planet, and are thus a focus of global conservation efforts. They are also a prime location for the production of many global agricultural commodities.These dynamics-often intertwined-may trap local populations between powerful interests, with the potential to affect their well-being.2. We conducted 100 structured interviews in four biodiversity-rich landscapes of north-eastern Madagascar to investigate how multi-dimensional human well-being is affected by the recent establishment of protected areas and surge in cash crop prices.We asked households about their satisfaction-and changes in satisfaction-with locally relevant well-being components, mapping their answers through Nussbaum's Central Capabilities approach. We also investigated the cultural significance of key natural resources beyond the material benefits they provide. All issues were explored along four variables: site, main source of rice, gender and household land use portfolio.3. Our findings are as follows: first, human capabilities are interconnected and mutually interdependent, with relational values linking many of them. Second, subjective accounts of well-being are influenced by cognitive biases, such as treadmill effects, adaptive preferences and recency bias. Third, while households perceived a positive influence of protected areas, those most reliant on forest land and products held a more negative view of conservation interventions.