Doctoral Dissertation Research: Multilevel Modeling of Household and Accessibility-Zone Drivers of Land Change in the Northeastern Peruvian Amazon

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This study will examine differential land-use patterns associated with peasant households in the urban-rural gradient around Iquitos, the largest city in the Peruvian Amazon. Access to urban markets and services in the Iquitos region is hypothesized to affect land-use decision-making among peasant households in neighboring rural settlements. To explicitly address the spatial variability of transportation and market accessibility, multilevel models will be constructed. Multilevel modeling allows testing the significance of geographic contextual factors that might variably affect local factors among different localities. Four generalized land-use types (mature forest, commercial and subsistence agriculture, and fallow) will be modeled through multilevel regression considering demographic, political-economic, socioeconomic, and environmental factors as predictor variables collected through geocoded structured interviewing at the household level, in approximately 625 peasant farms. A total of 25 accessibility zones will be delineated based on proximity to urban markets and transportation routes, and differentiated among types of roads and rivers employing cartographic and remotely sensed data. In these models a clear distinction between commercial and subsistence farm activities will be drawn in order that the determinants of peasant land use can be examined in terms of access to and use of urban markets. Further, the analysis will also model forest extent to facilitate exploring deforestation drivers associated with peasant livelihood strategies and fallow/forest regrowth dynamics, which will provide insights about land-use intensity and the long-term sustainability of peasant agricultural practices. The analysis of peasant land-use patterns has not been addressed regionally in the urban-rural gradient centered on Iquitos. The study area presents the unique opportunity to test a multilevel statistical procedure that could better account for contextual drivers of landscape change in regions with significant environmental and socioeconomic heterogeneity, as opposed to more common single-level regression models. Results will indicate whether such multilevel conceptualization of the rural-urban landscape is valuable for the analysis of peasant land use in the Peruvian Amazon, so positing its applicability and usefulness in other regions. This research will contribute theoretically and materially to land-use and land-cover change and Amazonian studies generally while specifically addressing the importance of transportation accessibility and multilevel impacts on landscape transformation. In addition to contributing to academic studies, this work will also be presented in written and oral form in both English and Spanish to current project collaborator Peruvian Institute of Amazonian Studies (IIAP) as a tool for management and decision-making. Further, students or recent graduates from the National University of the Peruvian Amazon in Iquitos will be hired as field assistants and trained for household survey, including survey coding and collection of geographically referenced data.