I study the territorial divergences of trans-national eco-regions in South America and the socio-economic factors that may explain differences in their human-natural systems. I am also interested in understanding the forces of land-use change in agricultural frontiers and how economic, conservation, or zoning policies can influence them now or in the future.
#socio-ecological land systems, #borders, #frontiers, #governance, #impacts, #trade-offs
Themes
Telecoupling of land use systems, Land governance, Land change trade-offs for ecosystem services and biodiversity , Land management systems, Land use and conflict
A new paper in PNAS demonstrates an approach to identify homesteads of forest-dependent people and to track their resource base over 30 years across the entire South American Gran Chaco (1.1 million km2). The transferable and scalable methodology puts forest smallholders on the map and can help to uncover the land-use conflicts at play in many deforestation frontiers across the globe.
A new paper in Sustainability Science looks at how transnational socio-ecological land systems highlight the influence of institutions under different governance regimes in defining the spatial configuration and ecological properties of regions. Land systems' asymmetries are mediated by the primary production of the ecosystems, agriculture aptitude and by contrasting perceptions and valuation of the same ecoregion across national borders. In addition, the land-use history, legacies and cultural heritage can promote land systems’ asymmetries depending on complex interactions and feedbacks of socio-ecological systems.
