Collaborative Research: Contentious Land Change in the Eastern Amazon

土地变化研究已经确定了一些影响毁林和森林破碎化的因素，包括财政激励措施、基础设施发展、移徙和家庭进程。 这一研究项目将通过考虑一个尚未得到充分研究的因素，即土地资源不平等所产生的社会进程，扩大土地变化研究的解释力。 该项目的调查人员将扩大土地变化的机构或责任的概念，往往部署在土地变化的研究不加批判，考虑社会行动和反应发生在十年的时间段和行为者谁不总是在经济上的“理性”的方式。 研究人员将为巴西北方的东南部帕拉州的土地变化制定一个全面的观点，该州是亚马逊河流域无数发展计划的实验室和战场。 为了描述1984年至2010年之间的土地变化，包括森林砍伐，重新造林和森林斑块动态，研究人员将采用遥感和景观生态学技术。 为了研究土地变化的社会进程方面，特别是对土地的争夺，他们将进行彻底的新闻媒体分析，涵盖5,000多个冲突的新闻报道。 他们将通过实地采访和深入的案例研究来补充这一档案研究，这些研究涉及至少五名土地所有者和许多当地关键线人。 通过将实地采访与遥感和景观生态学相结合，研究人员将把亚马逊河流域的土地变化视为一个综合的过程系统，而不仅仅是一个由“理性”经济决策驱动的单一森林砍伐过程。调查人员希望发现，与没有争议的财产相比，那些引起争议的财产显示出更大的整体森林砍伐和增加（或不同）的森林破碎模式。 研究人员将试图确定竞争是否导致了森林结构的转变，创造了一个更复杂的森林景观，对该地区的生态产生负面影响。该项目将重新定义研究区域的土地变化，将其视为一个发生在社会竞争背景下的过程，并将揭示社会过程和多个，有时是同时发生的土地管理者如何影响土地变化。 该项目将有助于扩大公认的理论和观点在土地变化科学，特别是响应最近呼吁开放的行为为基础的解释土地变化的社会进程和权力关系的影响。 通过评估土地冲突对环境的影响，该项目将揭示冲突如何影响热带森林砍伐对全球气候变化的影响。 它将为评估通过联合国REDD计划减少森林砍伐的举措提供新的视角，并在许多其他国家具有政策相关性。 通过采用积极的学习模式，学生将在美国和巴西的本科课程中学习所有“真实的世界”混乱中的社会重要性的复杂问题。

Land-change research has identified a number of factors that influence deforestation and forest fragmentation, including fiscal incentives, infrastructure development, migration, and household processes. This research project will expand the explanatory power of land-change research by considering a factor that has not been adequately studied, namely social processes stemming from unequal access to land resources. The project's investigators will broaden the concept of land-change agency or responsibility, often deployed uncritically in land-change research, by considering social actions and reactions occurring over decadal time periods and by actors who do not always behave in economically "rational" ways. The researchers will develop a comprehensive perspective on land change for southeastern Para state of northern Brazil, a laboratory and battleground for myriad Amazonian development initiatives. To characterize land change between 1984 and 2010, including deforestation, reforestation, and forest patch dynamics, the researchers will employ remote sensing and landscape ecology techniques. To examine the social process aspects of land change, especially contention over land, they will conduct a thorough news media analysis covering more than 5,000 news accounts of conflict. They will complement this archival research with field interviews and intensive case-studies involving at least five landowners and many local key informants. By mixing field interviews with remote sensing and landscape ecology, the researchers will treat Amazonian land change as an integrated system of processes, not just a singular process of deforestation driven by "rational" economic decisions. The investigators expect to find that properties that play host to contention displayed greater overall deforestation and increased (or different) forest fragmentation patterns than for properties that were not contested. The researchers will seek to ascertain whether contention has led to a forest structure shift, creating a more complex forest landscape with negative implications for the region's ecology.This project will reframe land change in the study area as a process occurring within a context of social contention, and it will shed light on how social processes and multiple, sometimes simultaneous, land managers affect land change. The project will help extend accepted theories and perspectives in land-change science, specifically responding to recent calls for opening behavior-based explanations of land change to the influences of social processes and power relations. By evaluating the environmental implications of land conflict, the project will shed light on how conflict could affect the contribution of tropical deforestation to global climate change. It will provide new perspectives for evaluating initiatives to reduce deforestation via the UN's REDD program and have policy relevance in many other nations. By adopting an active learning paradigm, students will study complex issues of societal import in all their "real world" messiness in undergraduate courses in the U.S. and Brazil.