Abstract
Abstract. Shifting cultivation is a common agricultural practice in the Pacific Islands rarely sustainable today since fallow periods are ever shorter due to the demographic growth, farms fragmentation, uncertain land tenure, and pressures from the market economy among other factors (drivers). Official statistical data and maps were utilized to build up chloropleth maps indicating the areas of high land use intensity (LUI) according to farm size ranges and socioeconomic parameters (treatments) for the country. Twenty vector layers were digitized from published maps for eight ranges of farm sizes (from less than 1 to more than 100 ha), and converted to raster format with a 170 m2 pixel size. Critical maps were then built by boolean operations displaying areas in which both the land use and the socioeconomic driver were simultaneously ranked as high or very high. Treatments showed significant differences among them (p < 0.05), being the most influential those related to human demography. In farms smaller than 3 ha size land use is intense when (in order of importance) Indo-fijian population, household size and land availability values are high; while in farms of 20–50 ha size it is intense when the values of (in order of importance) population change, Indo-fijian population, land availability, fishing and sugar farming are also high. LUI patterns normally decrease with the increase of farm size, but increases on farms over 20 ha size. It is recommended to propose policies that will des-accelerate the rates of land use, such as the facilitation of land ownership over farms of bigger sizes, the gradual replacement of mono cropping by agroforestry systems, and the creation of more employment opportunities in the industry, tourism and services sectors.
Highlights
Deforestation and forest degradation are both critical environmental problems with serious long term economic, social and ecological consequences
Short fallows trigger yield declines (Kafle 2011). After shifting cultivation both the fallow age and land use intensity influence the recovery of native trees diversity (Mukul 2015); the forest degradation and subsequent rural poverty worsens in a cycle when there are few economic alternatives, unstable or low market prices, no incentives for innovation, and successive subdivision of land at the death of the owner (Chayanov 1966)
Eight maps showing land use intensity per province according to farm size range were produced
Summary
Deforestation and forest degradation are both critical environmental problems with serious long term economic, social and ecological consequences. Overlay analysis is a common method to understand spatial interaction from more than two pieces of spatial information (Miyazaki and Fujii 2011) in which the Boolean intersection and the Boolean union result in classifying areas as suitable for a particular land use if each suitability map meets its threshold, or at least one suitability threshold value (Malczewski 2004). The hypotheses in this paper is firstly that there are significant differences between impacts of drivers on the intensification of land use, and secondly, that there are significant differences among the land use intensity index values at land holdings of different sizes in the country
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
