Oliver T Coomes
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 189123 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Oliver T Coomes |
| PRENOMES | Oliver T |
| SOBRENOME | Coomes |
| ASSINATURA | COOMES O T |
| AFILIAÇÕES | McGill University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8220-8758 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 60 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 844 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 60 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1992 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 11 |
Impacts of Social Assistance During the Covid‐19 Pandemic in Poor Remote Communities
Providing social assistance to poor populations in remote communities in times of crises, such as pandemics, is challenging but crucial. This paper examines how food assistance during the COVID‐19 pandemic affected people's behaviour, using our surveys among over 400 rural communities without road access in the Peruvian Amazon. Food assistance affected people's travel to cities by riverboat to collect cash assistance in distinct ways, depending o…
Pervasive Indigenous and local knowledge of tropical wild species
The promise of Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) for conservation policy depends on how pervasively ILK is held among local people. In the Peruvian Amazon, we conducted a landscape-scale concordance analysis between (1) ILK for game, timber, and fish species collected by the largest representative ILK survey as yet undertaken in tropical forests, and (2) remotely sensed land cover as proxies for species habitat. From our survey among 4000 hous…
Diverse values regarding nature are related to stable forests
Local land use emerges from peoples’ worldviews and values regarding nature. In neotropical forest landscapes, largely inhabited by Indigenous peoples, exploring how Indigenous land use and underlying values may converge with global values such as carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation may provide lessons to achieve equitable ecological and social outcomes. However, most studies have focused on exploring the influence of Indigenous la…
Covid-19 y medidas de protección adoptadas en comunidades rurales amazónicas durante los primeros meses de la pandemia
Implications. Identifying the factors that contributed to contagion and the barriers to the adoption of protective measures in rural Amazonian populations will help to face future pandemics
Drivers and consequences of archetypical shifting cultivation transitions
Shifting cultivation remains an important land system in many tropical landscapes, but transitions away from shifting cultivation are increasingly common. So far, our knowledge on the social–economic and environmental drivers and consequences of such shifting cultivation transitions is incomplete, focusing on certain transitions, drivers, consequences or regions. Here, we use an archetype approach, validated through systematically identified lite…
Tropical forest environments provide insurance against Covid-19
Research prior to the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that the rural poor often turn to wild resources to cope with adverse shocks. We report on the first study addressing natural insurance against health shocks during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on riverine communities without road access in the Peruvian Amazon. We consider the most devastating shock people may experience, the death of a close family member. Using data from an in-person survey o…
The Academic Job Market in U.S. Geography and the Business Cycle
The Great Recession of 2007–2009 had profound effects on all sectors of the U.S. economy. In this article we assess the relationship between the academic job market in U.S. geography and the business cycle. Specifically, we examine the responsiveness of the job market to the business cycle since the early 1970s, the impacts of the Great Recession on hiring, and how hiring networks changed with the recession. For our analyses we draw on data from …
Covid-19 information and self-protective behaviors among rural communities in tropical forests
Our findings call for improved media access to better manage pandemics in rural areas, especially among remote Indigenous communities
Sparing of Amazonian old-growth forests with floodplain access
What motivates urban dwellers to adapt to climate-driven water insecurity? An empirical study from Lima, Peru
Integrated multi-scalar analysis of vulnerability to environmental hazards
Smallholder agriculture results in stable forest cover in riverine Amazonia
Recent studies point to a rapid increase in small-scale deforestation in Amazonia. Where people live along the rivers of the basin, customary shifting cultivation creates a zone of secondary forest, orchards and crop fields around communities in what was once was old-growth terra firme forest. Visible from satellite imagery as a narrow but extensive band of forest disturbance along rivers, this zone is often considered as having been deforested. …
What drives clearing of old-growth forest over secondary forests in tropical shifting cultivation systems? Evidence from the Peruvian Amazon
The Lower Ucayali River in Prehistory
Published evidence of prehistoric settlement from the lowlands of Amazonian Peru is sufficiently scarce to perpetuate debates over the presence and impact of early populations in western Amazonia. In this paper we review the cultural prehistory of the Lower Ucayali River, assess the presence of archeological sites and recovered artifacts, and describe a promising new site (Suni Caño) which may have been the chiefdom seat of the late prehistoric C…
Impoverishment of local wild resources in western Amazonia
A growing number of studies point to the depletion of flora and fauna along rivers of the Brazilian Amazon but the status of wild resources over large areas in Western Amazonia remains poorly known. In this paper we report on findings from the Peruvian Amazon based on the first large-scale community survey that uses local ecological knowledge to assess the presence of indicator species and expected harvest yields of game, fish and timber along fo…
Agricultural innovation and environmental change on the floodplains of the Congo River
Climate-driven environmental changes bring new risks but also opportunities to populations living along the world's major rivers. Based on ethnoecological fieldwork, in this paper we examine how people living in the cuvette centrale of the Congo basin have adopted flood-recession agriculture on islands in the Congo River, taking advantage of a secular shift since the 1980s in the hydrological regime of the Congo River. Analyses of the hydrologica…
Protected Areas Fund Rural Household Dispersal to Urban Areas in Riverine Amazonia
Crisis restoration’ in post-frontier tropical environments
Increasing expansion of large-scale crop production onto deforested land in sub-Andean South America
A combination of high commodity crop prices, rising global food demand, and technological advances has transformed the scale of global crop production. Farming in South America is a prime example, where large-scale cash crops, such as soy, have transformed the land use dynamics at the forest frontier. We evaluate this transformation in sub-Andean South America by estimating crop and forest cover and detecting individual cropland field parcels usi…
Leveraging total factor productivity growth for sustainable and resilient farming
In the Footsteps of Mackintosh and Innis
In this article, we track the historical movement in Canada’s economic centre of gravity (ECG) since the early 20th century. A simple weighted mean centre approach is applied to a novel data set containing long-run estimates of household income at the provincial level. The analysis reveals that from 1926 to 2013, Canada’s ECG shifted westward by a net distance of 204 kilometres. Concomitant with this broad geographical shift, we identify six dist…
Rural Social Networks along Amazonian Rivers
Research on Amazonian communities has focussed more often on rural‐urban linkages than on links among rural communities. This is unsurprising, given the low density of population, limited intercommunity commerce, and importance of direct city‐market relations. Social relations among rural communities are also important in shaping rural livelihoods and lifeways. We report on the findings of a large‐scale census of communities in the Napo River bas…
What fate for swidden agriculture under land constraint in tropical forests? Lessons from a long-term study in an Amazonian peasant community
Seed Sharing in Amazonian Indigenous Rain Forest Communities
Environmental and market determinants of economic orientation among rain forest communities
The causes of land-use and land-cover change
Forest transitions
Cultivated Plant Species Diversity in Home Gardens of an Amazonian Peasant Village in Northeastern Peru
Farmer seed networks make a limited contribution to agriculture? Four common misconceptions
Distribution of Agrobiodiversity in Home Gardens along the Corrientes River, Peruvian Amazon
Rain Forest Extraction and Conservation in Amazonia
Concern over the fate of the Amazonian rain forest and its peoples has prompted a wave of internationally-sponsored initiatives that promise to conserve the forest while benefiting indigenous peoples. In this paper, the challenges posed by such endeavours are reviewed and a critical synthesis posed of prevailing notions of the rain forest, its peoples, and the economic logic of forest product extraction and trade that underlie current conservatio…
Home Gardens in Amazonian Peru
This article examines how peasant farmers build and maintain agrobiodiversity in home gardens found in two traditional peasant communities along the Marañón River in the Peruvian Amazon. Data were gathered through household and garden surveys as well as in‐depth interviews with garden tenders in an upland mixed agricultural village and a lowland fishing village. Substantial variations in cultivated plant diversity were encountered in gardens betw…
Wild Rubber
Concern over the fate of the rain forest and peoples of Amazonia has inspired a renewed interest in the extraction of natural products from the region. Accounts of the Amazon Rubber Boom (1860-1910) are of particular interest in view of the dominance of the rubber industry during one of the most influential periods in the region's history as well as the continuing economic importance of wild rubber extraction to thousands of Amazonian households …
Of Stakes, Stems, and Cuttings
Studies of indigenous agricultural systems in Amazonia often devote only limited attention to the accessibility and exchange of crop plant germplasm among Amerindian and folk peoples. I argue that scarcity of crop planting material-geographically, seasonally, and socially-in rural Amazonia has given rise to socioeconomic relations that profoundly influence indigenous agriculture and rural life. Access to seeds, cuttings, and other plant propagule…
Amazonian Peasants, Rain Forest Use, and Income Generation
Rapid Rural Appraisal in Humid Tropical Forests
Amazonian Peasants, Rain Forest Use, and Income Generation
This article explores the role of wealth and geographical factors in shaping livelihood strategies among forest peasant households in the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve area of the Peruvian Amazon. Using household survey data (n = 251), the article shows significant livelihood heterogeneity, differential specialization in resource use, and variations in wealth portfolios across and within villages. Analyses of relationships among household wealt…
The Amazon Rubber Boom
Oliver T. Coomes, Bradford L. Barham, The Amazon Rubber Boom: Labor Control, Resistance, and Failed Plantation Development Revisited, The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 74, No. 2 (May, 1994), pp. 231-257
Land use and forest fallowing dynamics in seasonally dry tropical forests of the southern Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico
State credit programs and the peasantry under populist regimes
Rural Social Networks along Amazonian Rivers
Research on Amazonian communities has focussed more often on rural‐urban linkages than on links among rural communities. This is unsurprising, given the low density of population, limited intercommunity commerce, and importance of direct city‐market relations. Social relations among rural communities are also important in shaping rural livelihoods and lifeways. We report on the findings of a large‐scale census of communities in the Napo River bas…
What fate for swidden agriculture under land constraint in tropical forests? Lessons from a long-term study in an Amazonian peasant community
Human Modification of a Large Meandering Amazonian River
Evidence is mounting regarding the significant extent and scope of long-term human modification of "pristine nature" in the neotropics. In Amazonia, recent studies point to the landscape imprint of human activity that has transformed the forests, savannas, soils, and waterways of the basin. In this report, we describe a massive meander cutoff in the Peruvian Amazon along the Ucayali River--the fifth-longest river in the Amazon basin--that was tri…
Leveraging total factor productivity growth for sustainable and resilient farming
Forests as landscapes of social inequality
Coomes, O. T., Y. Takasaki. and J. M. Rhemtulla. 2016. Forests as landscapes of social inequality: tropical forest cover and land distribution among shifting cultivators. Ecology and Society 21(3):20.http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-08684-210320
Land-use regime shifts
A key research frontier in global change research lies in understanding processes of land change to inform predictive models of future land states. We believe that significant advances in the field are hampered by limited attention being paid to critical points of change termed land-use regime shifts. We present an analytical framework for understanding land-use regime shifts. We survey historical events of land change and perform in-depth case s…
Blackwater Rivers, Adaptation, and Environmental Heterogeneity in Amazonia
Cormorant Fishing in Southwestern China
Crisis restoration’ in post-frontier tropical environments
In the Footsteps of Mackintosh and Innis
In this article, we track the historical movement in Canada’s economic centre of gravity (ECG) since the early 20th century. A simple weighted mean centre approach is applied to a novel data set containing long-run estimates of household income at the provincial level. The analysis reveals that from 1926 to 2013, Canada’s ECG shifted westward by a net distance of 204 kilometres. Concomitant with this broad geographical shift, we identify six dist…
Blackwater Rivers, Adaptation, and Environmental Heterogeneity in Amazonia
Reinterpreting the Amazon Rubber Boom
Few periods in South American history have so captured the imagination and begged the attention of scholars as the Amazon rubber boom. For fifty years, the extraction of wild rubber from the jungles of the Amazon fueled unprecedented economic expansion in the region: per capita incomes in the Brazilian Amazon climbed by 800 percent; the regional population increased by more than 400 percent; urban centers and secondary towns blossomed along the r…
Wild Rubber
Concern over the fate of the rain forest and peoples of Amazonia has inspired a renewed interest in the extraction of natural products from the region. Accounts of the Amazon Rubber Boom (1860-1910) are of particular interest in view of the dominance of the rubber industry during one of the most influential periods in the region's history as well as the continuing economic importance of wild rubber extraction to thousands of Amazonian households …
The Amazon Rubber Boom
Oliver T. Coomes, Bradford L. Barham, The Amazon Rubber Boom: Labor Control, Resistance, and Failed Plantation Development Revisited, The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 74, No. 2 (May, 1994), pp. 231-257
State credit programs and the peasantry under populist regimes
Risky Rivers
Rain Forest Extraction and Conservation in Amazonia
Concern over the fate of the Amazonian rain forest and its peoples has prompted a wave of internationally-sponsored initiatives that promise to conserve the forest while benefiting indigenous peoples. In this paper, the challenges posed by such endeavours are reviewed and a critical synthesis posed of prevailing notions of the rain forest, its peoples, and the economic logic of forest product extraction and trade that underlie current conservatio…
Prosperity's Promise
Introduction The Organization And Performance Of The Wild Rubber Industry In Amazonia Models of the Industrial Organization of Extractive Activities Rubber Industry Characteristics: Markets, Extraction, and Trade Rubber Industry Conduct: From Endowments to Relations and Returns The Performance of the Wild Rubber Industry Revisited Taking Stock: Lessons and Challenges of the Wild Rubber Industry Investment, The State, And Dutch Disease In The Amaz…
Tropical forests and shifting cultivation
Rapid Rural Appraisal in Humid Tropical Forests
The causes of land-use and land-cover change
Amazonian Peasants, Rain Forest Use, and Income Generation
Amazonian Peasants, Rain Forest Use, and Income Generation
This article explores the role of wealth and geographical factors in shaping livelihood strategies among forest peasant households in the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve area of the Peruvian Amazon. Using household survey data (n = 251), the article shows significant livelihood heterogeneity, differential specialization in resource use, and variations in wealth portfolios across and within villages. Analyses of relationships among household wealt…
Cormorant Fishing in Southwestern China
Paleoriverine Features of the Amazon Lowlands
Rain forest ‘conservation-through-use’? Chambira palm fibre extraction and handicraft production in a land-constrained community, Peruvian Amazon
Targeting conservation–development initiatives in tropical forests
Land use and forest fallowing dynamics in seasonally dry tropical forests of the southern Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico
Cultivated Plant Species Diversity in Home Gardens of an Amazonian Peasant Village in Northeastern Peru
Home Gardens in Amazonian Peru
This article examines how peasant farmers build and maintain agrobiodiversity in home gardens found in two traditional peasant communities along the Marañón River in the Peruvian Amazon. Data were gathered through household and garden surveys as well as in‐depth interviews with garden tenders in an upland mixed agricultural village and a lowland fishing village. Substantial variations in cultivated plant diversity were encountered in gardens betw…
Forest transitions
Indigenous livelihoods, slash-and-burn agriculture, and carbon stocks in Eastern Panama
The fate of the tropical forest
Distribution of Agrobiodiversity in Home Gardens along the Corrientes River, Peruvian Amazon
Structure and Organisation of Small-Scale Freshwater Fisheries
Geography (52 obras) · Ecology (47 obras) · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management (35 obras) · Amazon rainforest (31 obras) · Economics (29 obras) · Agriculture (28 obras) · Agroforestry (28 obras) · Biology (28 obras) · Environmental Science (26 obras) · Business (22 obras)