Gmelina boom, farmers’ doom: Tree growers’ risks, coping strategies and options

A strong belief by Clavaria farmers that there is ‘gold in Gmelina growing’ turned out to be a huge frustration among tree out growers in southern Philippines in the late 1990s. The lack of a market study and appropriate government support system to address farmers’ tree growing risks resulted in a great loss, not only financially but also in terms of local people’s confidence in tree growing in the area. A large number of tree growers returned to subsistence farming while others opted to have their land rented out to multi-nationals for high value crops production (including bananas and pineapples). However, the majority shifted to fruit bearing trees. Ten farmers were interviewed using Problem in Context analysis, and they made various recommendations for government to improve the financial performance and regulatory environment for tree farming. These recommendations included the removal of the cutting permit requirements for timber grown in private woodlots, setting the wood price regulatory system to safeguard the interest of small tree growers, providing wood market information and strategic networks for tree growers to find alternative markets or use for their timber produce, and encouraging the private sector to establish small wood processing plants in every municipality in order to provide ready markets for timber produce. It was also suggested that government initiate contract tree growing between the private sector and farmers’ groups, provide more planting area for interested tree growers, and assist small tree farmers to form or strengthen local cooperatives

Modelling the dynamics of agroforestry adoption in the uplands of Southern Philippines using companion modelling approach

A model was developed following an iterative process based on repetitive back-and-forth steps between the model and field activities. A Multi Agent System (MAS) was integrated with a Role-Playing Game (RPG) to understand the dynamics of agroforestry adoption in Claveria, Misamis Oriental. The model simulated and observed different scenarios: cumulative income of agroforestry adopters and non-adopters, impact of market information on farm income, and neighbour effects on the spread of agroforestry adoption. Results of the computer simulations were verified using farmer games and focus group discussions. Agroforestry and non-agroforestry farmers were invited to participate in the role-playing game in order to understand more precisely and validate the model. During the conduct of the role-playing game, the individual behaviour of agents under a number of scenarios and the properties of the system emerging from their interactions were examined and discussed among the players. The model scenarios and role-playing game can serve as a decision support for policymakers, farmers and other stakeholders towards sustainable management of resources. It is envisioned to produce information useful for understanding the decision-making strategies of farmers with regard to agroforestry adoption that can be essential to the success of efforts to address the sustainability of upland areas in the Philippines and elsewhere in south-east Asia

Vulnerability to Rainfall-Induced Landslide of Three Communities in Infanta, Quezon, Philippines

Four successive tropical cyclones hit the Philippines and brought damages to several towns in the provinces of Quezon and Aurora between November 14 and December 4 in 2004. The municipalities of Infanta, Real, and General Nakar were severely damaged and as a result the communities were exposed to physical risks and experienced socio-economic difficulties. To affect policies and plans in avoiding risks brought about by disasters that may happen in the future, the vulnerabilities to rainfall-induced landslide of the three most devastated barangays in Infanta, Quezon, namely Pinaglapatan, Ilog, and Magsaysay, were determined using an agent-based model. This study determined the vulnerability of three communities based on the framework that vulnerability is influenced by the amount and intensity of rainfall received by the area in a given time, the conditions of the biophysical characteristics of the area, and the socio-economic profile of the community in the area. A time series model to capture the long-term rainfall pattern in the area was developed with consideration to the occurrences of extreme events. Biophysical studies were conducted on the study sites to determine their respective characteristics using topography (slope and elevation), land-use, and soil type as parameters. Through a respondent-type survey, the socio-economic profiles of the communities were characterized using income, livelihood, participation in social networks, and existence of community early warning systems, among others, as parameters. Because of the barangay

The contribution of insects to global forest deadwood decomposition

The amount of carbon stored in deadwood is equivalent to about 8 per cent of the global forest carbon stocks. The decomposition of deadwood is largely governed by climate with decomposer groups—such as microorganisms and insects—contributing to variations in the decomposition rates. At the global scale, the contribution of insects to the decomposition of deadwood and carbon release remains poorly understood. Here we present a field experiment of wood decomposition across 55 forest sites and 6 continents. We find that the deadwood decomposition rates increase with temperature, and the strongest temperature effect is found at high precipitation levels. Precipitation affects the decomposition rates negatively at low temperatures and positively at high temperatures. As a net effect—including the direct consumption by insects and indirect effects through interactions with microorganisms—insects accelerate the decomposition in tropical forests (3.9% median mass loss per year). In temperate and boreal forests, we find weak positive and negative effects with a median mass loss of 0.9 per cent and −0.1 per cent per year, respectively. Furthermore, we apply the experimentally derived decomposition function to a global map of deadwood carbon synthesized from empirical and remote-sensing data, obtaining an estimate of 10.9 ± 3.2 petagram of carbon per year released from deadwood globally, with 93 per cent originating from tropical forests. Globally, the net effect of insects may account for 29 per cent of the carbon flux from deadwood, which suggests a functional importance of insects in the decomposition of deadwood and the carbon cycle

Image Segmentation Parameter Optimization Considering Within- and Between-Segment Heterogeneity at Multiple Scale Levels: Test Case for Mapping Residential Areas Using Landsat Imagery

Multi-scale/multi-level geographic object-based image analysis (MS-GEOBIA) methods are becoming widely-used in remote sensing because single-scale/single-level (SS-GEOBIA) methods are often unable to obtain an accurate segmentation and classification of all land use/land cover (LULC) types in an image. However, there have been few comparisons between SS-GEOBIA and MS-GEOBIA approaches for the purpose of mapping a specific LULC type, so it is not well understood which is more appropriate for this task. In addition, there are few methods for automating the selection of segmentation parameters for MS-GEOBIA, while manual selection (i.e., trial-and-error approach) of parameters can be quite challenging and time-consuming. In this study, we examined SS-GEOBIA and MS-GEOBIA approaches for extracting residential areas in Landsat 8 imagery, and compared naïve and parameter-optimized segmentation approaches to assess whether unsupervised segmentation parameter optimization (USPO) could improve the extraction of residential areas. Our main findings were: (i) the MS-GEOBIA approaches achieved higher classification accuracies than the SS-GEOBIA approach, and (ii) USPO resulted in more accurate MS-GEOBIA classification results while reducing the number of segmentation levels and classification variables considerably

Measuring disaster resilience in the Philippines: evidence using network data envelopment analysis

In this paper, we assess the resilience of households in responding to climate-induced calamities such as flash floods and landslides in Compostela Valley of the Philippines. Using cross-sectional survey data collected in 2013 and 2014, we applied the integrated data envelopment analysis (DEA)-based network model to estimate a composite resilience score, ranging from zero to one, and decomposed into coping and adaptive capacities. The overall resilience score of households is, on average, 0.75, while the average coping and adaptive capacity scores are 0.61 and 0.92, respectively. The correlation of the overall resilience with the adaptive capacity is significantly higher than that of the overall resilience and the coping capacity. This implies that adaptation measures of households mainly depend on external assistance that enables vulnerable households to recover from calamity, and thus effectively achieve post-event life stabilization. No significant difference in the overall resilience scores is found among villages in the surveyed area

The Role of Bioenergy in Enhancing Energy, Food and Ecosystem Sustainability Based on Societal Perceptions and Preferences in Asia

This paper discussed the analysis of the survey on sustainability of bioenergy conducted in the Philippines, India and China. It acquired general perceptions of the people by asking them (a) specific questions about their level of familiarity with bioenergy; (b) relationship of their work to bioenergy; and (c) their opinion on contribution of various feedstock on the economy and impact of bioenergy production on food security. In addition to these questions, we estimated preference weights of various feedstock based on the conjoint choices on bioenergy’s contribution to social stability, social welfare and ecological balance. The estimates revealed significant trade-offs not only among these three dimensions of sustainability but also the relative importance of energy security, food security and ecosystem capacity to other economic, social and environmental objectives. The types of first generation feedstock that are currently used for biofuel production in the respective countries and those that offer alternative household use are perceived as important to the economy and preferred bioenergy feedstock. Based on the results of the study, the preferred role of bioenergy for sustainable development reflects the social and economic concerns in the respective Asian countries, e.g., energy security in China, food security in India, and ecosystem degradation in the Philippines