Understanding and modelling the ambiguous impact of off-farm income on tropical deforestation

Few land-allocation models consider the impact of off-farm income on tropical deforestation. We provide a concept to integrate off-farm income in a mechanistic multiple-objective land-allocation model, while distinguishing between farms with and without re-allocation of on-farm labor to obtain off-farm income. On farms with re-allocation of labor we found that off-farm income reduced farmers’ financial dependency on deforestation-related agricultural income leading to less tropical deforestation. The influence of off-farm income covered two aspects: availability of additional income and re-allocation of on-farm labor to off-farm activities. The labor effect tended to reduce deforestation slightly more than the income effect. On farms without re-allocation of on-farm labor we showed how farmers can use off-farm income to purchase additional labor to accelerate deforestation. Our study highlights the importance of considering off-farm income in land-use models to better understand, model and possibly curb tropical deforestation.</p

Robomussel data

Robomussel data: intertidal biomimic body temperature of mussels deployed at 6 different countries. 1913 .txt files in total. Files are categorized by location (country, region, site). In addition, metadata file show specific information for loggers at each site

iButton/Tidbit data

ibutton/Tidbit data: intertidal thermal sensors (aerial and water temperature) deployed at 5 different countries. 160 .txt files in total. Files are categorized by location (country, region, site). In addition, metadata file show specific information for loggers at each site