Deforestation and Reforestation of Latin America and the Caribbean (2001–2010)

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 (À541,835 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.Abstract in Spanish is available in the online version of this article.

Multiple-scale prediction of forest loss risk across Borneo

“…Random forest (RF; Breiman 2001) is increasingly used in a range of applications including digital soil mapping (Grimm et al 2008), forest biomass mapping (Baccini et al 2012), species distribution modeling (Evans and Cushman 2009) and others given its often superior performance compared to other methods (Evans et al 2011). RF is also gaining prominence in land-use classification (e.g., Aide et al 2013;Grinand et al 2013), where it outperforms classification and regression trees (CART; RodriguezGaliano et al 2012) and maximum likelihood classifiers (Schneider 2012). Nonparametric procedures like RF are particularly effective at identifying complex multivariate associations, such as those that affect patterns of forest loss.…”

“…Nonparametric procedures like RF are particularly effective at identifying complex multivariate associations, such as those that affect patterns of forest loss. Few analyses of forest loss have employed random forest (but see Aide et al 2013;Grinand et al 2013), and none to our knowledge quantitatively compare the performance of random forest to other commonly used modelling approaches, such as logistic regression, or utilize multi-scale optimization (sensu McGarigal et al 2016).…”

Understanding patterns of land-cover change in the Brazilian Cerrado from 2000 to 2015

“…Indeed, government development and environmental policies are crucial determinants of rates of LUCC in tropical countries [15,17], and, in turn, such policies are strongly influenced by national and international economic factors [13,14]. In Latin America, rates of land conversion currently track the international markets for soya bean and meat products [3,18]. In Brazil, over the recent decades, rates of LUCC have been strongly influenced by China's economic growth and high demand for mineral and agricultural commodities [19], and internal and European demand for biofuels [13,20].…”

“…In tropical regions, the most important landcover change is the agricultural conversion and consequent degradation of natural ecosystems [3,4], with drastic impacts for biodiversity and ecosystem function, in turn affecting the provision of ecosystem services that support human well-being [2,5]. On the other hand, clearing of natural vegetation can be, to a degree, mitigated by natural regeneration, a process frequently neglected in LUCC studies [6], and conservation research and policies [3,7]. However, specific programmes and funds to both protect biodiversity and promote ecosystem recovery are usually focused or even restricted to tropical forests with higher carbon stocks [8,9].…”

Effect of National-Scale Afforestation on Forest Water Supply and Soil Loss in South Korea, 1971–2010

“…However, deforestation is common in many countries mainly due to food and fuel supplies, and there have been few successful cases of afforestation programs. Currently, a number of forests in North Korea and in the tropical forests of South America, Central Africa and Southeast Asia are being destroyed [4,5].…”