TRADEOFFS BETWEEN RURAL DEVELOPMENT POLICIES AND FOREST PROTECTION: SPATIALLY-EXPLICIT MODELING IN THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS OF VIETNAM

Alleviating rural poverty remains an important objective of development policy in many areas of the world. However, traditional means of increasing rural livelihoods such as increased investments in agricultural intensification measures can have disastrous impacts on natural resources such as forests by greatly increasing incentives for clearing. This paper contains a spatially-explicit model of land use in the Dak Lak province in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Land use is modeled using a reduced-form multinomial logit model, and policy simulations are conducted. These simulations demonstrate that the adoption of yield-increasing inputs requires concomitant forest protection policies, both in terms of forest area and spatial configuration.International Development,

THE DYNAMICS OF LAND-COVER CHANGE IN WESTERN HONDURAS: SPATIAL AUTOCORRELATION AND TEMPORAL VARIATION

This paper presents an econometric analysis of land-cover change in western Honduras. Ground-truthed satellite image analysis indicates that between 1987 and 1996, net reforestation occurred in the 1,015.12 km2 study region. While some reforestation can be attributed to a 1987 ban on logging, the area of reforestation greatly exceeds that of previously clear-cut areas. Further, new area was also deforested between 1987-1996. Thus, the observed land-cover changes most likely represent a complex mosaic of changing land-use patterns across time and space. We estimate a random-effects probit model to capture drivers of land-cover change that are spatial, temporal or both. We employ two techniques to correct for spatial error dependence in econometric analysis suitable to qualitative dependent variables. Lastly, we simulate the impact of anticipated changes in transportation costs on land cover. We find that market accessibility, increase in national coffee prices, and agricultural suitability are the most important determinants of recent land-cover change.Land Economics/Use,

THE VARIED IMPACT OF GREENWAYS ON RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY VALUES IN A METROPOLITAN, MICROPOLITAN, AND RURAL AREA: THE CASE OF THE CATAWBA REGIONAL TRAIL

This paper presents hedonic analyses designed to estimate the real estate premium from improved access to a regional greenway system in three distinct counties. The hypothesis is tested that unobservable factors relating to the overall economic structure of each county influence how and to what extent access to open space is effectively capitalized into residential sales prices.Land Economics/Use,

Ten facts about land systems for sustainability

Land use is central to addressing sustainability issues, including biodiversity conservation, climate change, food security, poverty alleviation, and sustainable energy. In this paper, we synthesize knowledge accumulated in land system science, the integrated study of terrestrial social-ecological systems, into 10 hard truths that have strong, general, empirical support. These facts help to explain the challenges of achieving sustainability in land use and thus also point toward solutions. The 10 facts are as follows: 1) Meanings and values of land are socially constructed and contested; 2) land systems exhibit complex behaviors with abrupt, hard-to-predict changes; 3) irreversible changes and path dependence are common features of land systems; 4) some land uses have a small footprint but very large impacts; 5) drivers and impacts of land-use change are globally interconnected and spill over to distant locations; 6) humanity lives on a used planet where all land provides benefits to societies; 7) land-use change usually entails trade-offs between different benefits—"win–wins" are thus rare; 8) land tenure and land-use claims are often unclear, overlapping, and contested; 9) the benefits and burdens from land are unequally distributed; and 10) land users have multiple, sometimes conflicting, ideas of what social and environmental justice entails. The facts have implications for governance, but do not provide fixed answers. Instead they constitute a set of core principles which can guide scientists, policy makers, and practitioners toward meeting sustainability challenges in land use

Ten facts about land systems for sustainability

Land use is central to addressing sustainability issues, including biodiversity conservation, climate change, food security, poverty alleviation, and sustainable energy. In this paper, we synthesize knowledge accumulated in land system science, the integrated study of terrestrial social-ecological systems, into 10 hard truths that have strong, general, empirical support. These facts help to explain the challenges of achieving sustainability in land use and thus also point toward solutions. The 10 facts are as follows: 1) Meanings and values of land are socially constructed and contested; 2) land systems exhibit complex behaviors with abrupt, hard-to-predict changes; 3) irreversible changes and path dependence are common features of land systems; 4) some land uses have a small footprint but very large impacts; 5) drivers and impacts of land-use change are globally interconnected and spill over to distant locations; 6) humanity lives on a used planet where all land provides benefits to societies; 7) land-use change usually entails trade-offs between different benefits—"win–wins" are thus rare; 8) land tenure and land-use claims are often unclear, overlapping, and contested; 9) the benefits and burdens from land are unequally distributed; and 10) land users have multiple, sometimes conflicting, ideas of what social and environmental justice entails. The facts have implications for governance, but do not provide fixed answers. Instead they constitute a set of core principles which can guide scientists, policy makers, and practitioners toward meeting sustainability challenges in land use

Ten facts about land systems for sustainability

Land use is central to addressing sustainability issues, including biodiversity conservation, climate change, food security, poverty alleviation, and sustainable energy. In this paper, we synthesize knowledge accumulated in land system science, the integrated study of terrestrial social-ecological systems, into 10 hard truths that have strong, general, empirical support. These facts help to explain the challenges of achieving sustainability in land use and thus also point toward solutions. The 10 facts are as follows: 1) Meanings and values of land are socially constructed and contested; 2) land systems exhibit complex behaviors with abrupt, hard-to-predict changes; 3) irreversible changes and path dependence are common features of land systems; 4) some land uses have a small footprint but very large impacts; 5) drivers and impacts of land-use change are globally interconnected and spill over to distant locations; 6) humanity lives on a used planet where all land provides benefits to societies; 7) land-use change usually entails trade-offs between different benefits—"win–wins" are thus rare; 8) land tenure and land-use claims are often unclear, overlapping, and contested; 9) the benefits and burdens from land are unequally distributed; and 10) land users have multiple, sometimes conflicting, ideas of what social and environmental justice entails. The facts have implications for governance, but do not provide fixed answers. Instead they constitute a set of core principles which can guide scientists, policy makers, and practitioners toward meeting sustainability challenges in land use.The European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program; the Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA) Innovative Training Network actions under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme; the “María de Maeztu” Programme for Units of Excellence of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation; the NASA Land-Cover Land-Use Change Program; the Swiss Academy of Sciences; the National Research Foundation’s Rated Researcher’s Award; the UK Natural Environment Research Council Landscape Decisions Fellowship; and the “Nature4SDGs” project funded by NERC-Formas-DBT [UK Natural Environment Research Council-Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development-Indian Department of Biotechnology (from the Ministry of Science & Technology, Government of India)].https://www.pnas.orghj2022BiochemistryForestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute (FABI)GeneticsMicrobiology and Plant Patholog

Exploring the determinants of spatial pattern in residential land markets: amenities and disamenities in Charlotte, NC, USA

In this paper I present an empirical analysis of spatial patterns in land markets in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, between 2000 and 2003. It is well known that land markets reflect a variety of spatial factors that collectively influence market value, yet it is empirically difficult to sort out the relative contribution of overall and localized, the spatial and aspatial determinants of sales prices. Some of the classical assumptions about urban form that feed into hedonic analyses of land markets are explored. Then, three analyses are presented: simple visualization of single-family residential sales prices with regard to factors likely to influence land value, univariate and bivariate measures of spatial autocorrelation, and, finally, spatial econometric hedonic modeling.

TRADEOFFS BETWEEN RURAL DEVELOPMENT POLICIES AND FOREST PROTECTION: SPATIALLY-EXPLICIT MODELING IN THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS OF VIETNAM

Alleviating rural poverty remains an important objective of development policy in many areas of the world. However, traditional means of increasing rural livelihoods such as increased investments in agricultural intensification measures can have disastrous impacts on natural resources such as forests by greatly increasing incentives for clearing. This paper contains a spatially-explicit model of land use in the Dak Lak province in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Land use is modeled using a reduced-form multinomial logit model, and policy simulations are conducted. These simulations demonstrate that the adoption of yield-increasing inputs requires concomitant forest protection policies, both in terms of forest area and spatial configuration

Tradeoffs between Rural Development Policies and Forest Protection: Spatially Explicit Modeling in the Central Highlands of Vietnam

Alleviating rural poverty remains an important objective of development policy in many areas of the world. Traditional means of increasing rural livelihoods such as increased investments in agricultural intensification measures can have disastrous impacts on natural resources such as forests, by greatly increasing incentives for clearing. We use a spatially explicit model of land use in the Dak Lak province in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Land use is modeled using a reduced-form multinomial logit model. Policy simulations demonstrate that the adoption of yieldincreasing inputs requires concomitant forest protection policies, both in terms of forest area and of spatial configuration.

SPATIAL TESTS FOR EDGE-EFFECT EXTERNALITIES AND EXTERNAL SCALE ECONOMIES IN CALIFORNIA AGRICULTURE

This paper test the hypothesis that conflicts along borders shared with conventional farms and potential external economies of scale have led to clustering of certified organic farms, using 1997 data from Yolo County, CA. Using a variety of landscape and areal statistics and a spatially autoregressive limited dependent variable model, we find significant evidence of spatial clustering related to both factors