Spatially Explicit Data: Stewardship and Ethical Challenges in Science

Scholarly communication is at an unprecedented turning point created in part by the increasing saliency of data stewardship and data sharing. Formal data management plans represent a new emphasis in research, enabling access to data at higher volumes and more quickly, and the potential for replication and augmentation of existing research. Data sharing has recently transformed the practice, scope, content, and applicability of research in several disciplines, in particular in relation to spatially specific data. This lends exciting potentiality, but the most effective ways in which to implement such changes, particularly for disciplines involving human subjects and other sensitive information, demand consideration. Data management plans, stewardship, and sharing, impart distinctive technical, sociological, and ethical challenges that remain to be adequately identified and remedied. Here, we consider these and propose potential solutions for their amelioration

Pervasive transition of the Brazilian land-use system

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Household demographic change and land use/land cover change in the Brazilian Amazon

Demographic interest in population and environment has grown in recent decades. One of the most prominent research areas in this tradition addresses the impact of population on land use and land cover change. Building on this tradition, we examine the effects of household demographic composition on land use and land cover on small farms in two study areas in the Brazilian Amazon. Fixed effects regression models of used area and forested area show few consistent effects of changes in household demography on land use and land cover change. Effects are inconsistent with the household life cycle model that currently dominates the literature on household demographic effects in frontiers. Changes in the number of children and women, particularly young women, have the most significant effects on land use and land cover change. We conclude by arguing that households strategically access cash for investment in agriculture and that specific strategies are determined by economic and institutional context.28316318