CRB: The Causes of Tropical Deforestation: Quantitative and Comparative Analyses

CRB：热带森林砍伐的原因：定量和比较分析

• 批准号: 9123569
• 负责人: Thomas Rudel
• 金额: $ 10.28万
• 依托单位: Rutgers University New Brunswick
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1992
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1992-07-15 至 1995-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9123569&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CRB; Causes; Tropical; Deforestation; Quantitative

The clearance of tropical forests has been cited as one of the major factors contributing to the loss of biological diversity and to changes in atmospheric chemistry that may ultimately lead to global warming. While human activities have been identified as major causes of tropical deforestation, relatively little attention has been focused on the processes by which individuals and groups of people (whether functioning together informally or in more formal organizational units) actually make decisions that result in forest clearance. This project will develop and test a theory that identifies two forms of human action as means through which people act to remove tropical forests. One form of action is through the development of "growth coalitions" that act in a relatively coordinated manner to establish and operate an infrastructure aimed at removing trees and establishing more "developed" forms of activity. The other form of action is a somewhat ad hoc process that occurs when individuals with limited personal resources follow road- construction crews into new areas and clear small parcels near the roads. This tests of this theory will be undertaken through analyses of two extant databases that provide information about deforestation in a number of different countries. One database was gathered by the Food and Agriculture Organization in 1980 and 1990 in order to provide numerical estimates of amounts of deforestation. The second database consists of country-specific descriptions of deforestation based on reports prepared by FAO and the International Union on the Conservation of Nature and on other scientific studies. Theoretically relevant variables from these databases will be assembled into truth tables and the tables will be simplified through the use of Boolean algebra. Subsequent analyses should provide more direct insights into the causal links among different variables, thereby improving our understandings of the processes by which growth coalitions and individual actors clear forests. This project will make contributions to our understandings of tropical deforestation through a number of different means. It will develop and test new theoretical models about the processes of deforestation. Assembly and analysis of empirical data will provide valuable tests of these new models, and the data will become available for use by investigators for other related studies. The project also will enable some relatively new analytic procedures to be assessed in order to determine their efficacy and limitations for use in evaluating both quantitative and qualitative information.

热带森林的砍伐被认为是导致生物多样性丧失和大气化学变化的主要因素之一，最终可能导致全球变暖。 虽然人类活动已被确定为热带森林砍伐的主要原因，但人们相对较少关注个人和群体（无论是非正式地共同运作还是在更正式的组织单位中）实际做出导致森林砍伐的决策的过程。 该项目将开发和测试一种理论，该理论将人类行动的两种形式确定为人们砍伐热带森林的手段。 一种行动形式是通过发展“增长联盟”，以相对协调的方式行动，建立和运营旨在砍伐树木和建立更“发达”活动形式的基础设施。 另一种形式的行动是一种临时过程，当个人资源有限的个人跟随道路施工人员进入新区域并清理道路附近的小块土地时，就会发生这种情况。 该理论的检验将通过对两个现有数据库的分析来进行，这两个数据库提供了许多不同国家森林砍伐的信息。 粮食及农业组织于 1980 年和 1990 年收集了一个数据库，以提供森林砍伐量的数字估计。 第二个数据库根据粮农组织和国际自然保护联盟编写的报告以及其他科学研究，包含针对具体国家的毁林情况的描述。 理论上，这些数据库中的相关变量将被组装成真值表，并通过使用布尔代数来简化这些表。 随后的分析应该能够更直接地洞察不同变量之间的因果关系，从而提高我们对增长联盟和个体行为者砍伐森林过程的理解。 该项目将通过多种不同方式促进我们对热带森林砍伐的理解。 它将开发和测试有关森林砍伐过程的新理论模型。 经验数据的组装和分析将为这些新模型提供有价值的测试，并且这些数据将可供研究人员用于其他相关研究。 该项目还将评估一些相对较新的分析程序，以确定其在评估定量和定性信息时的有效性和局限性。