Collaborative Research: Contentious Land Change in the Eastern Amazon

土地变化研究确定了一些影响毁林和森林碎片化的因素，包括财政激励、基础设施发展、移民和家庭进程。这一研究项目将扩大土地变化研究的解释力，考虑到一个尚未得到充分研究的因素，即由于土地资源获取不平等而产生的社会过程。该项目的研究人员将拓宽土地变化机构或责任的概念，通过考虑在十年时间段内发生的社会行动和反应，以及那些在经济上并不总是以“理性”的方式行事的行为者，在土地变化研究中经常不加批判地部署这些机构或责任。研究人员将对巴西北部帕拉州东南部的土地变化形成一个全面的视角，那里是无数亚马逊开发倡议的实验室和战场。为了描述1984至2010年间的土地变化，包括砍伐森林、重新造林和森林斑块动态，研究人员将使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，他们将对新闻媒体进行全面的分析，涵盖5000多篇关于冲突的新闻报道。他们将通过实地访谈和深入的案例研究来补充这项档案研究，这些研究涉及至少五名土地所有者和许多当地的关键线人。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地区的土地变化视为一个综合的过程系统，而不仅仅是由“理性”的经济决策驱动的单一的森林砍伐过程。调查人员希望发现，与没有争议的房产相比，争用房产显示出更大的总体森林砍伐和更多(或不同的)森林碎片化模式。研究人员将试图确定争执是否导致了森林结构的变化，创造了一个更复杂的森林景观，对该地区的生态产生了负面影响。该项目将把研究区域的土地变化重新定义为一个在社会争执的背景下发生的过程，并将阐明社会过程和多个土地管理者(有时是同时发生的)如何影响土地变化。该项目将有助于扩展土地变化科学中被接受的理论和观点，特别是响应最近的呼吁，即开放基于行为的土地变化解释，以社会过程和权力关系的影响为基础。通过评估土地冲突对环境的影响，该项目将阐明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倡议提供新的视角，并在许多其他国家具有政策相关性。通过采用积极的学习范式，学生们将在美国和巴西的本科课程中研究复杂的社会重要性问题，而这些问题是他们在“现实世界”中的混乱之处。

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.