Agricultural Colonization and Ecological Destruction

近几十年来，人类活动最显著地改变了全球自然环境条件的过程之一是对大片热带雨林的破坏。在南美洲的亚马逊盆地，数百万英亩的土地被砍伐殆尽。相当多的学术注意力集中在加速砍伐森林的生物、大气和水文后果上，但相对较少的研究是进行的，以确定和理解亚马逊居民对热带雨林的态度，以及他们作为个人或团体成员清理土地的过程。该项目将包括一项试点研究，以改进调查工具，并将提供初步结果，以促进改进假设，以便对厄瓜多尔东北部苏贡比奥斯省热带雨林居民的态度和行动进行更大规模的研究。调查将通过对大约400个家庭成员的访谈进行测试。这些测试将确定收集关于移民人口和经济特征以及土地和资源使用做法的描述性信息的最有效手段；他们还将改进方法，以便有效地收集有关家庭对目前状况和未来愿望、资源的可得性以及影响个人活动的体制和社会因素的态度的资料。除了改进数据收集能力外，试验调查的结果还将用于改进一个涉及社会和生态过程的模型。该项目将与厄瓜多尔政府的一个机构国家发展委员会协调进行。这个项目将大大提高我们对具体调查和访谈方法在厄瓜多尔东北部等地区的有效性的认识。更重要的是，它将提供一种手段，收集有关正在清除大片热带雨林的定居者的特征以及导致他们这样做的观念和态度的宝贵信息。因此，这项研究的更广泛意义将体现在我们对人类如何评估和利用自然资源的一般理解，以及我们对社会和经济进程如何导致自然环境急剧变化的认识的提高。

One of the processes by which human activity has most dramatically altered natural environmental conditions across the globe in recent decades has been the destruction of large tracts of tropical rainforest. Millions of acres have been cleared in the Amazon basin of South America. Considerable scholarly attention has focused on the biological, atmospheric, and hydrological ramifications of accelerated deforestation, but relatively little research has been conducted to identify and understand the attitudes that residents of the Amazon have toward the rainforests and the processes by which they clear land individually and as members of groups. This project will consist of a pilot study to refine survey instruments and will provide preliminary results to facilitate refinement of hypotheses for a larger study of the attitudes and actions of rainforest residents rainforest in the Sucumbios province of northeastern Ecuador. Surveys will be tested in interviews with members of roughly 400 households. These tests will determine the most effective means of gathering descriptive information about the demographic and economic characteristics and the land- and resource-use practices of settlers; they also will refine methods for effectively eliciting information about household attitudes regarding current status and future aspirations, the availability of resources, and the institutional and societal factors affecting individual activities. In addition to refining data gathering capabilities, results from the trial surveys will be used to improve a model that relates social and ecological processes. The project will be conducted in coordination with the Consejo Nacional de Desarrollo, an agency of the Ecuador government. This project will significantly improve our knowledge of the efficacy of specific surveying and interviewing approaches in settings like northeastern Ecuador. More importantly, it will provide a means for gathering valuable information about the characteristics of settlers who are clearing large tracts of tropical rainforest and the perceptions and attitudes that lead them to act in that way. The broader significance of this research therefore will be felt both with respect to our general understandings of how people value and use natural resourcesand also in our improved knowledge about of the ways in which social and economic processes contribute to dramatic changes in the natural environment.