Beyond deforestation monitoring in conservation hotspots: Analysing landscape mosaic dynamics in north-eastern Madagascar

Zähringer, Julie Gwendolin; Hett, Cornelia; Ramamonjisoa, Bruno; Messerli, Peter (2016). Beyond deforestation monitoring in conservation hotspots: Analysing landscape mosaic dynamics in north-eastern Madagascar. Applied geography, 68, pp. 9-19. Elsevier 10.1016/j.apgeog.2015.12.009

	Text 1-s2.0-S0143622815300357-main.pdf__tid=9b01937e-c338-11e5-b4ec-00000aacb35e&acdnat=1453708539_f4dd78f212ff6f590fc1ce8393090e44 - Published Version Restricted to registered users only Available under License Publisher holds Copyright. Download (3MB) | Request a copy
Preview	Text (Post print) Zähringer_Beyond deforestation_2016_Postprint.pdf - Accepted Version Available under License Publisher holds Copyright. Download (2MB) | Preview

Due to its extraordinary biodiversity and rapid deforestation, north-eastern Madagascar is a conservation hotspot of global importance. Reducing shifting cultivation is a high priority for policy-makers and conservationists; however, spatially explicit evidence of shifting cultivation is lacking due to the difficulty of mapping it with common remote sensing methods. To overcome this challenge, we adopted a landscape mosaic approach to assess the changes between natural forests, shifting cultivation and permanent cultivation systems at the regional level from 1995 to 2011. Our study confirmed that shifting cultivation is still being used to produce subsistence rice throughout the region, but there is a trend of intensification away from shifting cultivation towards permanent rice production, especially near protected areas. While large continuous forest exists today only in the core zones of protected areas, the agricultural matrix is still dominated by a dense cover of tree crops and smaller forest fragments. We believe that this evidence makes a crucial contribution to the development of interventions to prevent further conversion of forest to agricultural land while improving local land users' well-being.

Interest & Impact

Downloads

217 since deposited on 08 Feb 2016
23 in the past 12 months

Citations

5 Citations in Web of Science ®
6 Citations in Scopus

Search

in Google Scholar™

Services

Actions (login required)

Edit item

Actions (login required)

Edit item