A methodological approach for assessing cross-site landscape change: Understanding socio-ecological systems

Socio-economic factors influencing land-use and land-cover changes in the miombo woodlands of the Copperbelt province in Zambia

“…For example, Schwartz and Caro (2003) noted that socio-economic factors alter or deplete forest cover and also alter forest structure and species composition. Among the socio-economic factors, agriculture expansion (Defries and Pandey, 2010;Kamwi et al, 2015;Vu et al, 2014., Sunderland et al, 2017, population growth (Giliba et al, 2011;Kamwi et al, 2015;Ariti et al, 2015;Yohannes et al, 2018), daily livelihood needs (Giliba et al, 2011), oil palm plantation establishment (Austin et al, 2017;Susanti and Maryudi, 2016) and policy shifts and regime change (Ariti et al, 2015;Maryudi and Sahide, 2017;Yohannes et al, 2018;Rahman et al, 2018) are reported to be among the most critical factors driving LULC change. Furthermore, other studies noted that household size, education, period of residence, distance to forest reserve and farmland size (Mitinje et al, 2007;Giliba et al, 2011) influence deforestation and degradation of forest resources.…”

The ethics of isolation, the spread of pandemics, and landscape ecology

“…The following three key aspects are essential to understand the evolution of landscape ecology and the emergence of a transdisciplinary, integrated science directed to solutions, which is being stressed by the current covid-19 pandemics Landscape ecology as a socio-ecological science Landscapes are recognized as a combination of natural structures/processes and anthropogenic pressures modeled by individual and collective decision making, dependent on socioeconomic conditions, including economic markets (especially food markets), but also on contrasting components such as cultural or historical legacies. Landscapes are intrinsically socio-ecological systems (Sunderland et al 2017) and landscape ecology is increasingly recognized as a socio-ecological science (Helfenstein et al 2014;Frazier et al 2019).…”

Testing the Various Pathways Linking Forest Cover to Dietary Diversity in Tropical Landscapes

“…While we will refer to these locations by their respective country names in the rest of the paper, it should be noted they are not representative of national-level conditions. Although each landscape is very different in some respects (e.g., differing forest types, levels of biodiversity, agricultural practices, market influence, and forest dependency; Table 1), the main characteristic comparable across all seven landscapes is that they exemplify clear gradients of agricultural expansion and intensification across the forest transition (Deakin et al, 2016;Sunderland et al, 2017). In this regard, they are representative of similar sites throughout the tropics exhibiting rapid rural change.…”

“…The data were collected between December 2014 and August 2016 from 275 farming households in Bangladesh, 281 in Burkina Faso, 242 in Cameroon, 219 in Ethiopia, 239 in Indonesia, 253 in Nicaragua, and 274 in Zambia, for a total of 1783 households (see survey questionnaire in Supplementary Material). In each landscape, households were selected using a stratified random sampling scheme across a gradient of forest-agricultural intensification (see Sunderland et al, 2017). As such, approximately a third of households were distributed in each of three zones: relatively high tree cover/low level of agricultural intensification; relatively low tree cover/high agricultural intensification; and intermediate tree cover/agricultural intensification.…”