The evaluation of the future dynamics of deforestation is essential to creating the basis for the effective implementation of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) initiatives. Such evaluation is often a challenging task, especially for countries that have to cope with a critical lack of data and capacities, higher uncertainties, and competing interests. We presen...

The varied islands of the Pacific provide an ideal natural experiment for studying the factors shaping human impact on the environment. Previous research into pre-European deforestation across the Pacific indicated a major effect of environment but did not account for cultural variation or control for dependencies in the data due to shared cultural ancestry and geographic proximity. The relativ...

Ten years after Indonesia implemented a major decentralisation policy, regional income per capita disparity and excessive rate of natural resource extraction continue to be pressing issues. There are great interests in identifying macro policies that would reduce regional income disparity and better control the rate of natural extraction, while maintaining reasonable national economic growth. T...

The objective of this study is to better understand the complexity of deforestation processes in southern Cameroon by testing a multivariate, spatial model of land-cover change trajectories associated with deforestation. The spatial model integrates a spectrum of independent variables that characterize land rent on a spatially explicit basis. The use of a time series of high-spatialresolution r...

Virtually all migration research examines international migration or urbanization. Yet understudied rural migrants are of critical concern for environmental conservation and rural sustainable development. Despite the fact that a relatively small number of all migrants settle remote rural frontiers, these are the agents responsible for perhaps most of the tropical deforestation on the planet. Fu...

Two of the major problems facing the Amazon - human migration from the other areas and uncontrolled deforestation - constitute the greatest risk for the establishment of endemic Chagas disease in this part of Brazil. At least 18 species of triatomines had been found in the Brazilian Amazon, 10 of them infected with Trypanosoma cruzi, associated with numerous wild reservoirs. With wide-range def...

Tropical deforestation has caused a significant share of carbon emissions and species losses, but historical patterns have rarely been explicitly considered when estimating these impacts [1]. A deforestation event today leads to a time-delayed future release of carbon, from the eventual decay either of forest products or of slash left at the site [2]. Similarly, deforestation often does not res...

Unasylva 230, Vol. 59, 2008 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fourth assessment report (IPCC, 2007) estimated that the forest sector contributes 17.4 percent of all greenhouse gases from anthropogenic sources; most of this is due to deforestation and forest degradation. The Stern Review on the economics of climate change (Stern, 2007), furthermore, observed that “curbing deforesta...

To clarify mechanisms linking deforestation, anopheline ecology, and malaria epidemiology, this study draws together 60 examples of changes in anopheline ecology and malaria incidence as a consequence of deforestation and agricultural development. The deforestation projects were classified based on subsequent land use and were reviewed in terms of their impact on anopheline density and malaria ...

This study analyzes the optimal allocation of the world’s land resources over the course of the next century within a dynamic forwardlooking framework, which brings together distinct strands of economic, agronomic, and biophysical literature and incorporates key drivers affecting global land-use. We show that, while some deforestation is optimal in the near term, the desirability of further def...