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Forest, Agricultural, and Urban Transitions in Mainland Southeast Asia: Synthesizing Knowledge and Developing Theory
Project Start Date
04/01/2014
Project End Date
04/01/2017
Project Call Name
Solicitation

Team Members:

Person Name Person role on project Affiliation
Jefferson Fox Principal Investigator East-West Center, Honolulu, US
Andreas Heinimann Co-Investigator University of Bern, Vientiane, Switzerland
Annemarie Schneider Co-Investigator University of Wisconsin Nelson Institute, Madison, US
Ian Baird Co-Investigator Center For Cultural And Technical Interchange Between East and West, ,
Kaspar Hurni Co-Investigator University of Bern, Bern, Bern, Switzerland
Stephen Leisz Co-Investigator Colorado State University, Fort Collins, US
Nghiem Thi Phuong Tuyen Collaborator Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Vietnam
Ham Kimkong Collaborator Royal University of Phnom Penh, ,
Nong Huu Duong Graduate Student Researcher Vietnam National Universtiy of Agriculture, Hanoi, Vietnam
Miguel Castrence Other East-West Center, Honolulu, United States
Abstract

This project mapped land-cover and land-use change (LCLUC) if five countries of Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) – Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam – that over the past half past century have witnessed a major shift from subsistence agrarian economies to commercialized agriculture and, in the case of Thailand and Vietnam, industrialized societies. The project had two major objectives. First, we synthesized knowledge from seven previous and ongoing projects in the five-country region by studying transitions in forests, boom crops, and urban areas using remote sensing data sources and socioeconomic databases for the 2000-2012 period. Second, we enhanced the conceptual underpinnings of land change science by integrating aspects of land teleconnections, land use transitions, and political ecology to explicitly link land changes to local, national, and international drivers. The project documented change at both regional and local scales. At the regional scale, we focused on changes in forests and boom crops in upland areas above 300 masl, as well as urban expansion. Mapping changes in tree-dominated landscapes in MSEA is challenging because of the diverse types of tree covers–ranging from the secondary forests associated with shifting cultivation, deforestation, afforestation, to the expansion of new tree crops, as well as processes of change (e.g. natural vs. planted forests temporal dynamics related to shifting cultivation vs. expansion of permanent agriculture). Mapping periurbanization also remains difficult because there is no one standard method for defining or delineating these complex, heterogeneous areas. Given common themes in the ways the Co-PIs have approached these issues in the past (hypertemporal data mining, supervised classification, data fusion), we mapped boom crops and periurbanization simultaneously using a hierarchical, two step approach. We first located areas of change using MODIS EVI data. We then determined the type of change occurring in each hotspot by assessing multiple sources of remote sensing imagery, census data, and expert knowledge for each area. We simultaneously reviewed the socioeconomic literature on factors affecting the expansion of boom crops and urban areas in the region. Finally, we produced a comprehensive set of regional scale maps and datasets that reveal the complex story of LCLUC in the MSEA region between 2000 and 2012 and supported these maps with national scale narratives of policies on land, labor, capital, and other socioeconomic factors driving these changes. At the local scale, our work centered on sites in Laos and Cambodia where the hasty expansion of boom crops is of international concern. In these two countries, we accessed extensive secondary data including national and agricultural census data available at high spatial resolutions, and maps of land concessions, land cover, plantations, protected areas, etc. We capitalized on our access to these data to identify a sample of sites where we mapped and documented rapid change in greater spatial and temporal detail. All team members collaborated to document how investments made in one place affected land use in other places, and how that land use change may drive other land use changes at other sites. By integrating aspects of land change science and actor-network theory with remote sensing data, we produced an integrated understanding of LCLUC in areas of expanding boom crops and periurbanization in MSEA. We documented not only how distal drivers affected LCLU in a collection of sample sites, but also how those changes drove other LCLUC distally. The project provided an empirical understanding of political, economic, and social forces driving LCLUC at the local level.

Project Research Area

Project Documents

Year Type Title
2019 Publications Baird, I.G., W. Noseworthy, N.P., Tuyen, L.T., Ha, and J. Fox. 2019. Land grabs and labour: Vietnamese workers on rubber plantations in southern Laos. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 40 (1): 50-70.
2019 Publications Baird, I.G. 2019. Problems for plantations: Challenges for large-scale land concessions in Laos and Cambodia. Journal of Agrarian Change.
2018 Publications Nong, D.H., C.A. Lepczyk, T. Miura, and J.M. Fox. 2018. Quantifying urban growth patterns in Hanoi using landscape expansion modes and time series spatial metrics. PloS one 13(5): p.e0196940.
2018 Publications Fox, J., T. Nghiem, K. Ham, K. Hurni, and I. G. Baird. 2018. Large-Scale Land Concessions, Migration, and Land Use: The Paradox of Industrial Estates in the Red River Delta of Vietnam and Rubber Plantations of Northeast Cambodia. Land 7 (2): 1-17.
2018 Publications Hurni, K. and J. Fox. 2018. The expansion of tree-based boom crops in Mainland Southeast Asia: 2001 to 2014. Journal of Land Use Science 13 (1-2): 198-219.
2017 Publications Shirai, Y., J. Fox, S.J. Leisz, H. Fukui, and A.T. Rambo. 2017. The Influence of Local Non-Farm Employment on Rural Household Structure in Northeast Thailand. Journal of Rural Studies 54: 52-59.
2017 Publications Hurni, K.; Schneider, A.; Heinimann, A.; Nong, D.H.; Fox, J. Mapping the Expansion of Boom Crops in Mainland Southeast Asia Using Dense Time Stacks of Landsat Data. Remote Sens. 2017, 9, 320.
2017 Publications Shirai, Y., S. Leisz, J. Fox, and A.T. Rambo. 2017. Rural household characteristics and agricultural activities in relation to local non-farm employment: A comparative study of two wet-rice-growing villages in Northeast Thailand. Khon Kaen Agriculture Journal: 45 (4): 721-730.
2016 Annual Progress Report Progress Report: Forest, agricultural, and urban transitions in Mainland Southeast Asia: Synthesizing knowledge and developing theory Grant No. NNX14AD87G
2015 Publications Nong, D.H., J.Fox. And T. Miura. 2015. Built-up Area Change Analysis in Hanoi using Support Vector Machine Classification of Landsat Multi-temporal Image Stacks and Population Data. Land 4(4): 1213-1231.
2015 Publications Ahrends, A., P. Hollingsworth, A. Ziegler, J. Fox, H. Chen, Y.Su, and J. Xu. 2015. Current trends of rubber plantation expansion may threaten biodiversity and livelihoods. Global Environmental Change. 34: 48-58
2015 Publications Baird, I. and J. Fox. 2015. How land concessions affect places elsewhere: Telecoupling, political ecology, and large scale plantations in Southern and Laos and Northeast Cambodia. Land (4): 436-453.
2014 Publications Castrence, M., D. Nong, C. Tran, L. Young, and J. Fox. 2014. Mapping Urban Transitions Using Multi-Temporal Landsat and Dmsp-Ols Night-Time Lights Imagery of the Red River Delta in Vietnam. Land 3(1): 148-66.
2014 Publications Kontgis, C., A. Schneider, J. Fox, S. Saksena, J. Spencer and M. Castrence. 2014. Monitoring periurbanization in the greater Ho Chi Minh City metropolitan area. Applied Geography 53: 377-388.
2014 Publications Saksena, S., J. Fox, J. Spencer, M. Castrence, M. DiGregorio, M. Epprecht, N. Sultana, M. Finucane, L. Nguyen T.D. Vien. 2014. Classifying and Mapping the Urban Transition in Vietnam. Applied Geography 50: 80-89