The Global Forest Transition as a Human Affair

Forests across the world stand at a crossroads where climate and land-use changes are shaping their future. Despite demonstrations of political will and global efforts, forest loss, fragmentation, and degradation continue unabated. No clear evidence exists to suggest that these initiatives are working. A key reason for this apparent ineffectiveness could lie in the failure to recognize the agency of all stakeholders involved. Landscapes do not happen. We shape them. Forest transitions are social and behavioral before they are ecological. Decision makers need to integrate better representations of people’s agency in their mental models. A possible pathway to overcome this barrier involves eliciting mental models behind policy decisions to allow better representation of human agency, changing perspectives to better understand divergent points of view, and refining strategies through explicit theories of change. Games can help decision makers in all of these tasks

Looking beyond forest cover: an analysis of landscape-scale predictors of forest degradation in the Brazilian Amazon.

While forest degradation rates and extent exceed deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, less attention is given to the factors controlling its spatial distribution. No quantified correlation exists between changes of forest structure due to anthropogenic disturbances and dynamics of land use and cover change occurring at broader spatial levels. This study examines the influence of multi-scale landscape structure factors (i.e. spatial composition, configuration and dynamic of land use/cover) on primary forest's aboveground biomass (AGB), spanning from low to highly degraded, in Paragominas municipality (Pará state). We used random forest models to identify the most important landscape predictors of degradation and clustering methods to analyze their distribution and interactions. We found that 58% of the variance of AGB could be explained by metrics reflecting land use practices and agricultural dynamics around primary forest patches and that their spatial patterns were not randomly distributed. Forest degradation is mainly driven by fragmentation effects resulting from old deforestation and colonization events linked with cropland expansion (e.g. soybean and maize) coupled with high accessibility to market. To a lesser extent, degradation is driven by recent and ongoing (1985?2015) deforestation and fragmentation in slash-and-burn agricultural areas, characterized by heterogeneous mosaics of pastures and fallow lands combined with high use of fire. Our findings highlight the potential of landscape-level framework and remotely sensed land cover data for a thorough understanding of the distribution of forest degradation across human-modified landscapes. Addressing these spatial determinants by looking at agricultural dynamics beyond forest cover is necessary to improve forest management which has major implications for biodiversity, carbon and other ecosystem services

Gestion de la faune dans les concessions forestières en Afrique centrale

Les concessions forestières sont, au même titre que les autres espaces forestiers, des espaces multifonctionnels. Ces concessions, dont l'objectif principal est l'exploitation du bois d'oeuvre, sont des espaces sur lesquels différents usages coexistent. Les terroirs communautaires de chasse se superposent en partie à celles-ci. Il est donc possible d'envisager des formes de gestion multiusages au sein des concessions forestières. Les plans de gestion de la faune, élaborés conjointement avec les usagers locaux dans certaines concessions, prévoient un certain nombre de règles visant à la durabilité de l'exploitation des ressources fauniques. Ces plans reconnaissent des maîtrises spatialisées au profit de groupes communautaires autorisés. Le respect de tels plans, par les communautés, pourrait être renforcé en faisant évoluer les mécanismes de partage des bénéfices, issus de l'exploitation du bois d'oeuvre, vers une logique de paiements pour services environnementaux (PSE), c'est-à-dire en conditionnant les versements annuels issus des volumes de bois exploités au respect de certains accords portant sur la gestion ou la conservation des ressources au sein des terroirs communautaires. ( Résumé d'auteur

Using marked point process to study the relationships between the morphology of coppice clumps and the soil environment

International audienceThe relationships between coppice clump locations and morphological caracteristics on the one hand, and some soil environment variables on the other are studied. The theory of marked point process, which has not been used extensively in forestry studies, was found to be adequate for this exploratory and statistical analysis. The paper demonstrated its application and the efficiency to the method for the exploration. The mark, which corresponds to the coppice clump's morphological characteristics, is multidimensional and the basic framework of Stoyan's model (1984) had to be enlarged. K-functions, and "covariance functions", similar to those by Stoyan have to be defined, which give a method for exploring the spatial relationships within the data set. By using these functions and intensity estimations, it was shown that the clumps were regularly distributed, that the diameter of the clumps and the number of stumps, from the previous cut, were negatively correlated and that the height of the clumps was the only variable which was clearly correlated to the soil fertility. With the help of other "covariance functions" the spatial structure of the coppice was better described. The largest clumps had an in hibitory effect while the smallest clumps filled the gaps, so that there was a natural optimization of resource allocation

Estimating second order characteristics of point processes with known independent noise

International audienceThe analysis of point patterns often begins with a test of complete spatial randomness using summaries such as the emptyspace function F or the nearest neighbour distance distribution function G. These functions constitute basic summaries upon which many studies are based, depending on their shape. As the map of points is usually considered accurate, Monte Carlo tests are performed on the observed pattern without taking into account position errors. However, position errors usually occur during the mapping process. The aim of this article is to quantify the impact of measurement error on descriptive distance statistics and to integrate these errors in the non-parametric analysis. An application to tropical forest species is presented

Savannah gendered transition: how woodlands dynamics and changes in fuelwood delivery influence economic autonomy in Mali

This study examined the interactions between social and ecological dynamics in a savannah ecosystem in Mali. In a context of cotton crises and of forest reform with the creation of rural woodfuel markets managed by woodcutters' cooperatives, we assessed the impact of changes in savannah characteristics (biomass, biodiversity) on the delivery of fuelwood by comparing woodcutting practices in selected savannah sites and households from 2003 to 2010. Our findings show that changes in the delivery of fuelwood over the study period led to a shift in activities and roles and consequently affected the social status of different savannah users. Marginalized users (women and young men) benefited from the changes in savannah structure to secure independent livelihoods, and opportunities emerged for women and young men to increase their economic autonomy. Although the observed trends did not produce a radical transformation of existing (unbalanced) gender- and age-based power relations, this study demonstrates how changes in the savannah structure may offer vulnerable people an opportunity to change certain power imbalances and limitations