Stable Forest Cover under Increasing Populations of Swidden Cultivators in Central Laos: the Roles of Intrinsic Culture and Extrinsic Wildlife Trade

Robichaud, William; Sinclair, A. R. E.; Odarkor-Lanquaye, Naa; Klinkenberg, Brian

doi:10.5751/es-02873-140133

Cited by 35 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Evidences from swidden agriculture in Palawan Island of Philippines suggest that government policies and laws reinforce its decline, yet local farmers still lean on it because of the livelihood risk [85,143]. Additionally, Robichaud et al claimed that change of swidden agriculture in Nakai-Nam Theun National Protected Area (NNT NPA) of central Laos has a close connection with biodiversity conservation (e.g., suppressing local wildlife trade) and villagers' livelihoods [144]. Based on the abovementioned case studies, it could be found that the driving forces of swidden system change are variable from place to place.…”

Section: Analyzing the Underlying Drivers Of Swidden Agriculture Changesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review of Swidden Agriculture in Southeast Asia

et al. 2014

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Swidden agriculture is by far the dominant land use system in the mountainous regions of Southeast Asia (SEA). It provides various valuable subsistence products to local farmers, mostly the poor ethnic minority groups. Controversially, it is also closely connected with a number of environmental issues. With the strengthening regional economic cooperation in SEA, swidden agriculture has experienced drastic transformations into other diverse market-oriented land use types since the 1990s. However, there is very limited information on the basic geographical and demographic data of swidden agriculture and the socio-economic and biophysical effects of the transformations. International programs, such as the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD), underscore the importance of monitoring and evaluating swidden agriculture and its transition to reduce carbon emission due to deforestation and forest degradation. In this context, along with the accessibility of Landsat historical imagery, remote sensing based techniques will offer an effective way to detect and monitor the locations and extent of swidden agriculture. Many approaches for investigating fire occurrence and burned area can be introduced for swidden agriculture mapping due to the common feature of fire relatedness. In this review paper, four broad approaches involving spectral signatures, phenological characteristics, statistical theory and landscape ecology were summarized for swidden agriculture delineation. Five research priorities about swidden agriculture involving remote sensing techniques, spatial pattern, change, drivers and impacts were proposed accordingly. To our knowledge, a synthesis review on the remote sensing and outlook on swidden agriculture has not been reported yet. This review paper aims to give a comprehensive overview of swidden agriculture studies in the domains of debated definition, trends, remote sensing methods and OPEN ACCESSRemote Sens. 2014, 6 1655 outlook research in SEA undertaken in the past two decades.

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Section: Analyzing the Underlying Drivers Of Swidden Agriculture Changesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review of Swidden Agriculture in Southeast Asia

et al. 2014

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“…http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art40/ Strict preservation, in which local people are excluded or prevented from harvesting forest products, not only fosters resentment against conservation, but also diminishes indigenous knowledge that could contribute to ecosystem management (Laumonier et al 2008). It seems more realistic to work with current land users who have managed this land for a long time (Robichaud et al 2009), at least in some areas, than to expect many new reserves to be set up. New reserves would likely cause some displacement of local people, or place curbs on their activities, thereby creating more people-conservation conflicts.…”

Section: How Well Protected And/or Managed Are Tropical Forests Nowadmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable Forest Management in the Tropics: Is Everything in Order but the Patient Still Dying?

Nasi¹,

Fröst²

2009

E&S

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“…The awkward situation indicates that while the historical Landsat archive products are freely available to the public, on the one hand [23,27], the extent of ubiquitous swidden agriculture still remains ambiguous, on the other. Because of the rotational nature, the existing studies of swidden agriculture detection primarily utilize the single-date method, particularly by means of land use classification [28,29].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extent and Area of Swidden in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia: Estimation by Multi-Step Thresholds with Landsat-8 OLI Data

Zhu

2016

Remote Sensing

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Information on the distribution, area and extent of swidden agriculture landscape is necessary for implementing the program of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), biodiversity conservation and local livelihood improvement. To our knowledge, explicit spatial maps and accurate area data on swidden agriculture remain surprisingly lacking. However, this traditional farming practice has been transforming into other profit-driven land use, like tree plantations and permanent cash agriculture. Swidden agriculture is characterized by a rotational and dynamic nature of agroforestry, with land cover changing from natural forests, newly-cleared swiddens to different-aged fallows. The Operational Land Imager (OLI) onboard the Landsat-8 satellite has visible, near-infrared and shortwave infrared bands, which are sensitive to the changes in vegetation cover, land surface moisture content and soil exposure, and therefore, four vegetation indices (VIs) were calculated, including the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), the Normalized Difference Moisture Index (NDMI), the Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR) and the Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI). In this study, we developed a multi-step threshold approach that uses a combination of thresholds of four VIs and local elevation range (LER) and applied it to detect and map newly-opened swiddens and different-aged fallows using OLI imagery acquired between 2013 and 2015. The resultant Landsat-derived swidden agriculture maps have high accuracy with an overall accuracy of 86.9% and a Kappa coefficient of 0.864. The results of this study indicated that the Landsat-based multi-step threshold algorithms could potentially be applied to monitor the long-term change pattern of swidden agriculture in montane mainland Southeast Asia since the late 1980s and also in other tropical regions, like insular Southeast Asia, South Asia, Latin America and Central Africa, where swidden agriculture is still common.

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Stable Forest Cover under Increasing Populations of Swidden Cultivators in Central Laos: the Roles of Intrinsic Culture and Extrinsic Wildlife Trade

Cited by 35 publications

References 14 publications

A Review of Swidden Agriculture in Southeast Asia

A Review of Swidden Agriculture in Southeast Asia

Sustainable Forest Management in the Tropics: Is Everything in Order but the Patient Still Dying?

Extent and Area of Swidden in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia: Estimation by Multi-Step Thresholds with Landsat-8 OLI Data

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