An Approach for Assessing Changes of Forest Land Use, Their Drivers, and Their Impact to Society and Environment

Abstract

Globalization, urbanization, and new policies are changing land use, environment, and rural life. Policy makers need means to understand changes and their impacts for making wise decisions. This paper explores a methodological landscape-level approach for assessment and monitoring of changes in land use, forest cover and society, its drivers and impacts. It is based upon experience from case studies in "sia and "frica. The paper suggests that such approaches should address major issues of land use change including its drivers and impacts, generate policy relevant and accurate information, be cost-efficient and practical to implement, make appropriate use of modern knowledge, and engage stakeholders and decision makers. Technically, the approaches should cover all land types, objectively describe current land use and trends, enable verification, and be robust and flexible to address upcoming needs.The approach combines participatory field point sampling for estimating land use trends with remote sensing and GIS, household and key informant interviews for obtaining socio-economic and other information, and meetings with farmers and decision makers for feed-back and discussing policy issues. It illustrates that land use assessments for policy purposes can be developed to meet proposed requirements by combining different techniques and involving local stakeholders in inventory processes.

Influence of Land-Use Changes (1993 and 2013) in the Distribution of Wild Edible Fruits From Veracruz (Mexico)

“…Ecosystems and their biodiversity are constantly threatened (Hughes, 2017;Kideghesho, 2015;Sandewall & Gebrehiwot, 2015), land-use change (LUC) being the main driver of the loss (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). Deforestation, carried out mainly for expansion of cattle and agricultural land (Ferguson, Morales, & Rojas, 2009), is the most important form of LUC (Kideghesho, 2015), and consequently, the greatest threat to wild edible fruits (WEF) populations in forestlands (both managed and wild) and in specialized production systems.…”