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The Expansion of Rubber and its Implications for Water and Carbon Dynamics in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia
Project Start Date
04/10/2008
Project End Date
04/10/2012
Project Call Name
Regional_Initiative_Name
Solicitation

Team Members:

Person Name Person role on project Affiliation
Jefferson Fox Principal Investigator East-West Center, Honolulu, US
Abstract

MMSEA is experiencing major land-use change as subsistence farmers transition from shifting cultivation, which tends to maintain large areas of secondary forest, to commercial agriculture. Rubber is the major commercial crop replacing secondary forests, a direct result of strong market demands from China. Under a previous grant from NASA we documented that the timing and amount of water use by rubber during the dry season differs dramatically from that of secondary forest and traditional agriculture in the region. Others have shown that conversion of forest to plantation agriculture in other regions results in significant changes in stored carbon. Our objectives are to determine how the conversion from existing land covers to rubber affects local energy, water, and carbon fluxes, how extensive rubber will become in MMSEA, and what the consequences will be for regional hydrology and carbon sequestration. To characterize the extent of rubber in MMSEA, we will develop land-cover/use (LCLU) time-series maps for emerging, rubber-growing sites in MMSEA using knowledge-based classification of multi-sensor, multi-date remotely sensed imagery with a focus on identifying rubber cultivation as a distinct land use among forests, grasslands and other types of agriculture. Expansion of rubber to 2050 will be simulated by combining a regional suitability model for rubber with a dynamic, spatially-explicit, land cover/use change (LCLUC) model. We will use eddy covariance to measure water and carbon fluxes over rubber and secondary vegetation. The Ecosystem Demography model, parameterized by satellite-derived LCLU and observations of stand characteristics, including ground-based LiDAR, and calibrated by flux measurements, will be used to develop spatially-distributed estimates of water and carbon fluxes throughout MMSEA. This proposal is directly responsive to the goals stated in the NRA "to further understanding of the consequences of LCLUC on the carbon and water cycles" and directly relevant to the Monsoon Asia Integrated Regional Study.

Project Documents

Project Documents

Year Type Title
2014 Publications Fox, J., J-C. Castella, A. D. Ziegler, and S. B. Westley. 2014. Expansion of rubber mono-cropping and its implications for the resilience of ecosystems in the face of climate change in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia. Global Environmental Research 18 (2):145-150.
2014 Publications Fox, J., J.C. Castella, and A. Ziegler. 2014. Swidden, Rubber and Carbon: Can REDD+ work for people and the environment in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia? Global Environmental Change 29:318-326.
2014 Publications Fox, J. 2014. Through the technology lens: The expansion of rubber and its implications in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia. Vandergeest, P. and S. Gururani (Eds.) Special Issue on Changing Frontiers of Ecological Knowledges in Asia. Conservation and Society. 12 (4): 418-424
2013 Publications Fox, J. and J. C. Castella. 2013. Expansion of rubber (Hevea brasiliensis) in mainland Southeast Asia: What are the prospects for small holders? Journal of Peasant Studies. 40 (1): 155-170.
2011 Publications Li, Z. and J. Fox. 2011 Integrating Mahalanobis typicalities with a neural network for rubber distribution mapping. Remote Sensing Letters 2(2): 157-166. First published on:13 October 2010.
2011 Publications Fox, J., J. Vogler, O. Sen, A. Ziegler, and T. Giambelluca. Submitted. Simulating land-cover change in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia. Submitted to Journal of Land Use Science.
2011 Publications Li, Z. and J. Fox. Submitted. Rubber distribution mapping in northeastern Thailand using Landsat TM imagery, Journal of Land Use Science.
2011 Publications Fox J, J.C. Castella and A.D. Ziegler. 2011. Swidden, Rubber and Carbon: Can REDD+ work for people and the environment in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia? CCAFS Working Paper no. 9. CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). Copenhagen, Denmark. Available online at: www.ccafs.cgiar.org.
2011 Publications Li, Z. and J. Fox. Submitted. Mapping rubber in mainland Southeast Asia using time-series MODIS 250 m NDVI and statistical data. Journal of Applied Geography.
2010 Publications Cuo, L., J. Vogler, J. Fox. 2010. Topographic normalization for improving vegetation classification in a mountainous watershed in Northern Thailand. International Journal of Remote Sensing.
2010 Publications Guardiola-Claramonte, M., J. Fox, T.W. Giambelluca and P.A. Troch. 2010. Changing land use in the Golden Triangle: Where the rubber meets the road. In J. Roumasset, K. Burnett, and A. Balisacan (eds.) Sustainability Science for Watershed Landscapes. ISEAS Publishing, Singapore, pp. 235-250.
2010 Annual Progress Report Annual Progress Report: The Expansion of Rubber and its Implications for Water and Carbon Dynamics in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia
2010 NASA LCLUC Science Team Presentation Hotspots of LCLUC in Mainland Southeast Asia: Causes and consequences
2010 Publications Guardiola-Claramonte, M., P.A Troch, A.D. Ziegler, T.W. Giambelluca, M. Durcik, J.B Vogler, M.A Nullet. 2010. Modeling basin-scale hydrologic effects of rubber (Hevea brasiliensis) in a tropical catchment. Ecohydrology. DOI: 10.1002/eco.110
2009 NASA LCLUC Science Team Presentation Land Cover and Land Use Change Sing District, Luangnamtha Province, Lao PDR
2009 Publications Ziegler, A.D., J. Fox, J. Xu. 2009. The rubber juggernaut. Science 324: 1024-1025.
2009 Publications Fox, J., J. Vogler, and M. Poffenberger. 2009. Understanding changes in land and forest resource management systems: Ratanakiri, Cambodia. Southeast Asian Studies 47(3):309-329.
Year Type Title
2014 Publications Fox, J., J-C. Castella, A. D. Ziegler, and S. B. Westley. 2014. Expansion of rubber mono-cropping and its implications for the resilience of ecosystems in the face of climate change in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia. Global Environmental Research 18 (2):145-150.
2014 Publications Fox, J., J.C. Castella, and A. Ziegler. 2014. Swidden, Rubber and Carbon: Can REDD+ work for people and the environment in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia? Global Environmental Change 29:318-326.
2014 Publications Fox, J. 2014. Through the technology lens: The expansion of rubber and its implications in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia. Vandergeest, P. and S. Gururani (Eds.) Special Issue on Changing Frontiers of Ecological Knowledges in Asia. Conservation and Society. 12 (4): 418-424
2013 Publications Fox, J. and J. C. Castella. 2013. Expansion of rubber (Hevea brasiliensis) in mainland Southeast Asia: What are the prospects for small holders? Journal of Peasant Studies. 40 (1): 155-170.
2011 Publications Li, Z. and J. Fox. 2011 Integrating Mahalanobis typicalities with a neural network for rubber distribution mapping. Remote Sensing Letters 2(2): 157-166. First published on:13 October 2010.
2011 Publications Fox, J., J. Vogler, O. Sen, A. Ziegler, and T. Giambelluca. Submitted. Simulating land-cover change in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia. Submitted to Journal of Land Use Science.
2011 Publications Li, Z. and J. Fox. Submitted. Rubber distribution mapping in northeastern Thailand using Landsat TM imagery, Journal of Land Use Science.
2011 Publications Fox J, J.C. Castella and A.D. Ziegler. 2011. Swidden, Rubber and Carbon: Can REDD+ work for people and the environment in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia? CCAFS Working Paper no. 9. CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). Copenhagen, Denmark. Available online at: www.ccafs.cgiar.org.
2011 Publications Li, Z. and J. Fox. Submitted. Mapping rubber in mainland Southeast Asia using time-series MODIS 250 m NDVI and statistical data. Journal of Applied Geography.
2010 Publications Cuo, L., J. Vogler, J. Fox. 2010. Topographic normalization for improving vegetation classification in a mountainous watershed in Northern Thailand. International Journal of Remote Sensing.
2010 Publications Guardiola-Claramonte, M., J. Fox, T.W. Giambelluca and P.A. Troch. 2010. Changing land use in the Golden Triangle: Where the rubber meets the road. In J. Roumasset, K. Burnett, and A. Balisacan (eds.) Sustainability Science for Watershed Landscapes. ISEAS Publishing, Singapore, pp. 235-250.
2010 Annual Progress Report Annual Progress Report: The Expansion of Rubber and its Implications for Water and Carbon Dynamics in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia
2010 NASA LCLUC Science Team Presentation Hotspots of LCLUC in Mainland Southeast Asia: Causes and consequences
2010 Publications Guardiola-Claramonte, M., P.A Troch, A.D. Ziegler, T.W. Giambelluca, M. Durcik, J.B Vogler, M.A Nullet. 2010. Modeling basin-scale hydrologic effects of rubber (Hevea brasiliensis) in a tropical catchment. Ecohydrology. DOI: 10.1002/eco.110
2009 NASA LCLUC Science Team Presentation Land Cover and Land Use Change Sing District, Luangnamtha Province, Lao PDR
2009 Publications Ziegler, A.D., J. Fox, J. Xu. 2009. The rubber juggernaut. Science 324: 1024-1025.
2009 Publications Fox, J., J. Vogler, and M. Poffenberger. 2009. Understanding changes in land and forest resource management systems: Ratanakiri, Cambodia. Southeast Asian Studies 47(3):309-329.