Doctoral Dissertation Research: Integrated Assessment and Projection of Land-Use/Cover Change in the Southern Yucatan Peninsular Region of Mexico

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Global environmental change confronts humankind in many importantways. Tropical deforestation is one of the most pressing problems becauseof its significant roles as a source and sink of greenhouse gases, adepository of biotic diversity, a determinant of local climate, and as theresource base for a rapidly growing population worldwide. Much of the workon tropical deforestation to date has focused on science independent ofpolicy relevance. The proposed research seeks to redress this situation.It develops an explicitly policy-oriented model to project trends andscenarios of tropical deforestation for one of the remaining large blocks oftropical forests in southern Mexico. As this area is subject to growingimmigration and resource extraction, resource managers and institutions are faced with a bewildering array of immediate and longer term decisions. The model therefore considers deforestation as the result of peasant farmerdecision making in the context of an array of complex biophysical andsocioeconomic environments. A new type of simulation model will bedeveloped, one that captures the "reality" of the situation but yet providesoutputs that are policy relevant. The model does so by: (1) examining howindividual decision making is affected by environmental and socioeconomicconstraints; (2) incorporating explicit spatial and temporal patterns offorest change; (3) assessing the role of the value of information anduncertainty; and (4) permitting stakeholders and policy makers to evaluatescenarios of alternative land-use and institutional strategies. The modelis not conceptually derived but based on household surveys, archivalresearch, and spatial data including aerial photography, satellite imagery,and maps of land-use and biophysical characteristics.