Mapping Process to Pattern in the Landscape Change of the Amazonian Frontier

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8375758
AutoresRobert Toovey Walker (0000-0002-5691-7606, Michigan State University, autor de correspondencia), Robert Walker (0000-0002-7763-3784)
Año2003
Volumen93
Número2
Páginas376-398
Fecha de publicación2003-06-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAnnals of the Association of American Geographers (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0004-5608 • E-ISSN: 1467-8306
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1467-8306.9302008
OpenAlexW2000249539
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas54
Referencias citadas71

Changes in land use and land cover are dynamic processes reflecting a sequence of decisions made by individual land managers. In developing economies, these decisions may be embedded in the evolution of individual households, as is often the case in indigenous areas and agricultural frontiers. One goal of the present article is to address the land-use and land-cover decisions of colonist farmers in the Amazon Basin as a function, in part, of household characteristics. Another goal is to generalize the issue of tropical deforestation into a broader discussion on forest dynamics. The extent of secondary forest in tropical areas has been well documented in South America and Africa. Agricultural-plot abandonment often occurs in tandem with primary forest clearance and as part of the same decision-making calculus. Consequently, tropical deforestation and forest succession are not independent processes in the landscape. This article presents a framework that integrates them into a model of forest dynamics at household level, and in so doing provides an account of the spatial pattern of deforestation that has been observed in the Amazon's colonization frontiers

Abandonment (legal) · Agriculture · Agroforestry · Amazon rainforest · Amazonian · Climate change · Deforestation (computer science) · Ecological succession · Economics · Environmental resource management · Forest dynamics · Frontier · Geography · Land cover · Land use · Land use, land-use change and forestry · Political science · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management · Ecology · Economic and Environmental Valuation · Environmental Science · Land Use and Ecosystem Services