Collaborative Research: Contentious Land Change in the Eastern Amazon

合作研究：亚马逊东部有争议的土地变化

• 批准号: 1157496
• 负责人: Cynthia Simmons
• 金额: $ 4万
• 依托单位: Michigan State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-07-15 至 2015-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1157496&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Contentious; Land; Change

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.

土地变化研究已经确定了影响毁林和森林破碎化的若干因素，包括财政激励、基础设施发展、移徙和家庭进程。这个研究项目将考虑到一个尚未得到充分研究的因素，即由于不平等获得土地资源而产生的社会进程，从而扩大土地变化研究的解释力。该项目的调查人员将通过考虑在十年时间周期内发生的社会行动和反应以及不总是以经济上“理性”的方式行事的行动者，扩大土地变化机构或责任的概念，这种概念通常不加批判地应用于土地变化研究中。这组科学家将开发一个关于巴西北部帕拉州东南部土地变化的综合视角。帕拉州是无数亚马逊发展计划的实验室和战场。为了描述1984 - 2010年间的土地变化特征，包括森林砍伐、再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过程方面，特别是对土地的争夺，他们将进行全面的新闻媒体分析，涵盖5000多个冲突的新闻报道。他们将通过实地访谈和涉及至少五名土地所有者和许多当地关键线人的深入案例研究来补充这一档案研究。通过将实地访谈与遥感和景观生态学相结合，研究人员将把亚马逊的土地变化视为一个过程的综合系统，而不仅仅是一个由“理性”经济决策驱动的单一的森林砍伐过程。研究人员希望发现，与没有竞争的土地相比，竞争激烈的土地显示出更大的森林砍伐和更多（或不同的）森林破碎模式。研究人员将试图确定争论是否导致了森林结构的转变，从而创造了一个对该地区生态产生负面影响的更复杂的森林景观。该项目将研究区域的土地变化重新定义为社会竞争背景下发生的过程，并将阐明社会过程和多个（有时同时）土地管理者如何影响土地变化。该项目将有助于扩展土地变化科学中公认的理论和观点，特别是响应最近关于将基于行为的土地变化解释纳入社会进程和权力关系影响的呼吁。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，并对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，在所有“现实世界”的混乱中学习复杂的社会问题。