Determinants of the spatial distribution of cultivated land in the North Argentine Dry Chaco in a multi-decadal study

Gasparri, Ignácio; Grau, H. Ricardo; Sacchi, Laura Valeria

doi:10.1016/j.jaridenv.2015.05.005

Cited by 41 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 35 publications

(51 reference statements)

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“…A similar argument can be made for transport costs, although attributes related to this variable were not frequently associated with investment destinations in the interviews. Recent research suggests that transport costs are less important than yields for location decisions (41,42). A model of the determinant of land prices, including the effect of deforestation regulations, is discussed in Supporting Information, as are the effects of producer prices and juridical security.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The association of deforestation bias with cattle ranching may be explained by the greater mobility of ranching operations, which do not require great proximity to infrastructure. Their profitability is also more often based on the incorporation of cheap land and on the high soil fertility just after clearing (42). Farming companies are more dependent on input and services and seek proximity to agricultural clusters (39).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Land-use policies and corporate investments in agriculture in the Gran Chaco and Chiquitano

Waroux

Garrett

Heilmayr

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

109

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Growing demand for agricultural commodities is causing the expansion of agricultural frontiers onto native vegetation worldwide. Agribusiness companies linking these frontiers to distant spaces of consumption through global commodity chains increasingly make zero-deforestation pledges. However, production and land conversion are often carried out by less-visible local and regional actors that are mobile and responsive to new agricultural expansion opportunities and legal constraints on land use. With more stringent deforestation regulations in some countries, we ask whether their movements are determined partly by differences in land-use policies, resulting in "deforestation havens." We analyze the determinants of investment decisions by agricultural companies in the Gran Chaco and Chiquitano, a region that has become the new deforestation "hot spot" in South America. We test whether companies seek out less-regulated forest areas for new agricultural investments. Based on interviews with 82 companies totaling 2.5 Mha of properties, we show that, in addition to proximity to current investments and the availability of cheap forestland, lower deforestation regulations attract investments by companies that tend to clear more forest, mostly cattle ranching operations, and that lower enforcement attracts all companies. Avoiding deforestation leakage requires harmonizing deforestation regulations across regions and commodities and promoting sustainable intensification in cattle ranching.pollution haven | leakage | land-use change | soy | cattle

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Land-use policies and corporate investments in agriculture in the Gran Chaco and Chiquitano

Waroux

Garrett

Heilmayr

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

109

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“…The specimens from Bolivia and Paraguay were collected in the Gran Chaco ecoregion, which constitutes a large and continuous dry forest habitat covering a total area of more than 1 million km 2 and includes parts of Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay (Bucher, ; Marinaro et al ., ). The Chaco is considered a highly threatened biome due to its intensive conversion into agricultural land, for both crops (soybeans) and cattle grazing (Gasparri et al ., , ; Hansen et al ., ; Caldas et al ., ; Baumann et al ., ). In the Chaco, prior to this study, a single worker of X. explicatus was collected by hand in Bolivia and the remainder, including a single dealate queen, was collected by sampling the leaf litter with Winkler eclectors in Paraguay (Delsinne et al ., , ; Sosa‐Calvo et al ., ).…”

Section: Taxonomymentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution, systematics, and natural history of a new genus of cryptobiotic fungus‐growing ants

Sosa‐Calvo

Schultz

Ješovnik

et al. 2018

Systematic Entomology

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Xerolitor, a new, monotypic genus of fungus‐growing ants, is described to accommodate the phylogenetically isolated, relict species Mycetosoritis explicatus Kempf. We also diagnose the male and the larva of Xerolitor explicatus (Kempf) comb.n. and report ecological observations for the species, including nest architecture and foraging behaviour. Xerolitor explicatus comb.n. inhabits the dry habitats of the Brazilian Cerrado and the Bolivian and Paraguayan Gran Chaco. Bayesian multilocus phylogenetic analyses indicate that X. explicatus comb.n. is, contrary to some prior hypotheses, a member of the ‘higher’ fungus‐growing ants and the sister taxon of the genus Sericomyrmex Mayr. Results from phylogenetic analyses of the fungal cultivar grown by X. explicatus comb.n. in Paraguay, as well as the presence of gongylidia, indicate that the fungal mutualist is a member of the clade of higher fungal cultivar species and that it is probably the same species cultivated by some Trachymyrmex Forel and Sericomyrmex species.

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“…We know of only three studies that have assessed deforestation and postdeforestation land uses in South America, for the Cerrado (Grecchi et al, 2014), and all of South America (Graesser et al, 2015;Sy et al, 2015). Land-use change assessments are particularly scarce for the Gran Chaco, a 1 100 000-km² ecoregion extending into Argentina, Paraguay, and Bolivia which has been particularly heavily affected by deforestation (Hansen et al, 2013) and grazing-lands-to-cropland conversions (Gasparri et al, 2013(Gasparri et al, , 2015. As elsewhere in South America, landuse change assessments for the region have predominantly focused on deforestation only (Gasparri & Grau, 2009;Vallejos et al, 2015) or, when assessing postdeforestation dynamics, done so for smaller regions, short time periods, or at coarse scale only (Clark et al, 2010;Caldas et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Carbon emissions from agricultural expansion and intensification in the Chaco

Baumann

Gasparri

Piquer‐Rodriguez

et al. 2016

Global Change Biology

159

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Carbon emissions from land-use changes in tropical dry forest systems are poorly understood, although they are likely globally significant. The South American Chaco has recently emerged as a hot spot of agricultural expansion and intensification, as cattle ranching and soybean cultivation expand into forests, and as soybean cultivation replaces grazing lands. Still, our knowledge of the rates and spatial patterns of these land-use changes and how they affected carbon emissions remains partial. We used the Landsat satellite image archive to reconstruct land-use change over the past 30 years and applied a carbon bookkeeping model to quantify how these changes affected carbon budgets. Between 1985 and 2013, more than 142 000 km of the Chaco's forests, equaling 20% of all forest, was replaced by croplands (38.9%) or grazing lands (61.1%). Of those grazing lands that existed in 1985, about 40% were subsequently converted to cropland. These land-use changes resulted in substantial carbon emissions, totaling 824 Tg C between 1985 and 2013, and 46.2 Tg C for 2013 alone. The majority of these emissions came from forest-to-grazing-land conversions (68%), but post-deforestation land-use change triggered an additional 52.6 Tg C. Although tropical dry forests are less carbon-dense than moist tropical forests, carbon emissions from land-use change in the Chaco were similar in magnitude to those from other major tropical deforestation frontiers. Our study thus highlights the urgent need for an improved monitoring of the often overlooked tropical dry forests and savannas, and more broadly speaking the value of the Landsat image archive for quantifying carbon fluxes from land change.

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Determinants of the spatial distribution of cultivated land in the North Argentine Dry Chaco in a multi-decadal study

Cited by 41 publications

References 35 publications

Land-use policies and corporate investments in agriculture in the Gran Chaco and Chiquitano

Land-use policies and corporate investments in agriculture in the Gran Chaco and Chiquitano

Evolution, systematics, and natural history of a new genus of cryptobiotic fungus‐growing ants

Carbon emissions from agricultural expansion and intensification in the Chaco

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