Integrating Forest Cover Change with Census Data: Drivers and Contexts from Bolivia and the Lao PDR

Abstract

Abstract:The aim of this paper is to explore possible links between forest cover change and characteristics of social-ecological systems at sub-national scale based mainly on census data. We assessed relationships between population density, poverty, ethnicity, accessibility and forest cover change during the last decade for four regions of Bolivia and the Lao PDR, combining a parcel-based with a cell-based approach. We found that accessibility is a key OPEN ACCESSLand 2015, 4 46 driver of forest cover change, yet it has the effect of intensifying other economic and policy-related underlying drivers, like colonization policies, cash crop demand, but also policies that lead to forest gain in one case. Poverty does not appear as a driver of deforestation, but the co-occurrence of poverty and forest loss driven by external investments appears critical in terms of social-ecological development. Ethnicity was found to be a moderate explanatory of forest cover change, but appears as a cluster of converging socio-economic characteristics related with settlement history and land resource access. The identification of such clusters can help ordering communities into a typology of social-ecological systems, and discussing their possible outcomes in light of a critical view on forest transition theory, as well as the relevance and predictive power of the variables assessed.

Scenarios of land system change in the Lao PDR: Transitions in response to alternative demands on goods and services provided by the land

“…In recent years, several spatial and spatio-temporal assessments of land change have been carried out on different scales relevant to Laos. These include an assessment of land cover change for Montane Mainland South East Asia MMSEA on the regional level (Fox et al, 2012;Fox & Vogler, 2005;Leinenkugel et al, 2015) an inventory of land cover mosaics on the national level by Messerli et al (2009), several assessments of shifting cultivation using remote sensing on the subnational level (Boillat et al, 2015;Hurni et al, 2013;Hurni, et al 2012;Kamusoko et al, 2013;Liao et al, 2015) and effects of specific crops on landscapes and livelihoods on the local level (Evans et al, 2011). While the more local studies depict the agricultural transitions clearly, the transitions are not as evident from the large scale assessments as there is only a focus on land cover changes, ignoring the intricate changes in the land systems of which land cover change studies only provide a partial reflection (Schmidt-Vogt et al, 2009).…”

Drivers of forest change in Hoa Binh, Vietnam in the context of integration and globalization

“…Easily accessible communes inhabited by ethnic majority groups (Kinh) have increased forest cover. Similar situations have been found in Luang Prabang Province, Lao PDR, where forest gains that have occurred in more accessible areas shed further light onto the interaction between accessibility and other land use change drivers (Boillat et al ., ). Unlike the above studies, Do () reported that the key controlling factor of forest change in Vietnam's mountainous regions was the increasing demand of forestlands for cash plantations, namely, coffee and rubber.…”

Operationalizing a land systems classification for Laos

“…In using the classification, it has to be kept in mind that it is a diagnostic, descriptive assessment of one snapshot in time. As Boillat et al (2015) mentioned, meso-scale analyses are not capable to make statements about details of local conditions but they can lay out the scope of contexts for studies at finer scales. This typology can, therefore, be the basis for systematic selection of case study sites for more specific analyses e.g.…”

“…Assessing land systems becomes especially critical at scales above the sub-national level (Boillat et al, 2015;Messerli, Bader, Hett, Epprecht, & Heinimann, 2015;Schmidt-Vogt et al, 2009). At these larger spatial scales land cover data often becomes aggregated to larger units, while losing the mosaic of different, functionally important land use and land cover types (Verburg et al, 2011).…”