Traditional Land Use Patterns Research Articles

« La (toujours) belle Adriatique bleue » : le tourisme, le socialisme yougoslave, l’adoption et les limites de la préservation visuelle sur le littoral de l’Adriatique orientale, années 1960-1990

By the mid-1960s tourism on Yugoslavia’s Adriatic coast exploded, becoming a staple of the developing country’s economic drive to modernize as an “advanced socialist society.” But as tourism grew, so too did concerns about the potential pressures on the coastal environment that attracted tourists in the first place, presenting the leadership with a dilemma. Therefore, how and why did the preservation of visual values of the coast come to dominate questions of environmental protection, and what were the consequences of this? This paper demonstrates that the leadership of Yugoslavia and of post-socialist Croatia often attached economic value to the environment, and therefore protection often meant aesthetic protection. While developers were largely successful in preserving the visual beauty of the coast, beneath the surface many less-visible problems remained or appeared, including: pollution, overcrowding, unequal access, restrictions of traditional land-use patterns, and an overreliance on the summer season. Many of these issues have persisted up to the present day.

Migration, housing & disaster: Risk reduction and creation in Southern Italy's Apennines

Outgoing migration flows can influence demand, availability, location and quality of housing in the areas from which they originate, through dynamics such as remittance transfer and investment, cultural change, demographic decline and loss of skilled work. These dynamics may have diverse implications on disaster risk, potentially affecting the occurrence or intensity of some hazardous events and determining the levels of exposure and vulnerability of people and assets.This paper retraces the evolution of the housing stock as a product of outmigration in San Mango sul Calore and Cavallerizzo di Cerzeto, two mountain villages in Italy's Southern Apennines, in the decades preceding recent disasters. Over the second half of the 20th century, both municipalities witnessed intense outmigration, contributing to the expansion of their respective settlements' housing stock and the abandonment of traditional land-use patterns and building practices. These processes shaped hazard exposure and disaster vulnerability of different people in each community, producing a diversity of risk reduction and risk creation outcomes.This paper analyses the context-specific migration trajectories and risk outcomes in the two study areas, framing them through the findings of the global literature on migration, development and DRR, to identify theoretical implications and operational approaches relevant to understanding and addressing migration-housing-risk dynamics. Its insights can support risk reduction in places experiencing intense population outflows and related demographic and physical transformations.

Bird diversity along elevational gradients in the Dry Tropical Andes of northern Chile: The potential role of Aymara indigenous traditional agriculture.

Understanding diversity patterns along environmental gradients lies at the heart of community ecology and conservation. Previous studies have found variation in bird diversity and density along “natural” elevational gradients in the Tropical Andes Hotspot. However, there is still a lack of knowledge about how bird communities respond to traditional land-use patterns, in association with other multiple drivers, along elevations. In the present study, we investigated biotic, abiotic and anthropogenic sources of variation associated with bird species diversity, density and turnover along a 3000-m elevational gradient, in southern limit of the Tropical Andes Hotspot, northern Chile. Over four seasons, we conducted 472 bird point count surveys and established 118 plots distributed across the Desert, Pre-Puna, Puna and High-Andean belts, where biotic, abiotic and anthropogenic factors were measured. We used mixed-effects models to estimate alpha diversity and multinomial Poisson mixture models to estimate species density, accounting for detectability. Species diversity and density increased until 3300 masl and then declined. This type of elevational pattern is characteristic of dry-based mountains, where environmental conditions are suitable at mid-elevations. Habitats shaped by traditional Aymara indigenous agriculture, associated with relatively high vegetation heterogeneity, hosted the highest values of bird diversity and density. Species turnover was structured by habitat type, while elevational ranges of most species were restricted to three relatively discrete assemblages that replaced each other along the gradient. Our study revealed a hump-shaped relationship between elevation and bird diversity and density in the Dry Tropical Andes Biodiversity Hotspot, supporting a diversity pattern characteristic of dry-based mountains of the world. Traditional Aymara agriculture may have constructed ecological niches for biodiversity at mid-elevations, enhancing vegetation heterogeneity, thus providing resources for resident and rare species. Increasing loss of traditional land-use may present a threat to the bird community in the Tropical Andes Hotspot.

Landscape Drivers and Social Dynamics Shaping Microbial Contamination Risk in Three Maya Communities in Southern Belize, Central America

Land transformation can have cascading effects on hydrology, water quality, and human users of water resources, with serious implications for human health. An interdisciplinary analysis is presented, whereby remote-sensing data of changing land use and cover are related to surface hydrology and microbial contamination in domestic use areas of three indigenous Maya communities in Belize, Central America. We asked whether a departure from traditional land-use patterns toward intensified use led to consequences for hydrology and microbial contamination of drinking water, and investigated how social factors in the three study communities may act to ameliorate human health risks associated with water contamination. We showed that a departure from traditional land use to more intensive cultivation and grazing led to significantly increased surface water runoff, and intensified microbial contamination of surface water sources sometimes used for drinking. Results further suggested that groundwater contamination was widespread regardless of land cover, due to the widespread presence of pit latrines, pigs, and cows on the landscape, and that human users were consistently subject to health risks from potential pathogens as a result. Given that both surface and groundwater resources were found to be contaminated, it is important that water distribution systems (piped water from tanks; shallow and deep wells) be monitored for Escherichia coli and treated when necessary to reduce or eliminate contaminants and protect public health. Results of interviews suggested that strengthened capacity within the communities to monitor and treat centralized drinking water sources and increase water treatment at the point of use could lead to reduced risk to water consumers.

Urban Sprawl and Adverse Impacts on Agricultural Land: A Case Study on Hyderabad, India

Many Indian capitals are rapidly becoming megacities due to industrialization and rural–urban emigration. Land use within city boundaries has changed dynamically, accommodating development while replacing traditional land-use patterns. Using Landsat-8 and IRS-P6 data, this study investigated land-use changes in urban and peri-urban Hyderabad and their influence on land-use and land-cover. Advanced methods, such as spectral matching techniques with ground information were deployed in the analysis. From 2005 to 2016, the wastewater-irrigated area adjacent to the Musi river increased from 15,553 to 20,573 hectares, with concurrent expansion of the city boundaries from 38,863 to 80,111 hectares. Opportunistic shifts in land-use, especially related to wastewater-irrigated agriculture, emerged in response to growing demand for fresh vegetables and urban livestock feed, and to easy access to markets due to the city’s expansion. Validation performed on the land-use maps developed revealed 80–85% accuracy.

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in Cameroon — Assessing costs and benefits

A new momentum is underway to account for emissions from “avoided deforestation and degradation” at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This paper assesses the feasibility of one of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) mechanisms currently discussed, namely that of “Compensated Reduction”, in the case of Cameroon. Here we assess the differential revenues that a farmer could get from 1 ha of land out of two alternative land-uses: shifting cultivation, the traditional land-use pattern in southern Cameroon, or carbon credits as compensation for the conservation of primary forest. It is found that a break-even price of $2.85/t of carbon dioxide equivalent would level shifting cultivation with “Compensated Reduction”. This result suggests that at current carbon prices, and independently form variations in the discount rate, it could already be more profitable to preserve the primary forest rather than to log it in order to grow crops.

“Masters in Our Native Place”: The politics of Latvian national parks on the road from Communism to “Europe”

On May 1, 2004, eight formerly Communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe consummated their long-desired “return to Europe” by joining the European Union (EU). While popular perceptions of the east European environment center on nightmarish images of pollution hotspots, Communism also bequeathed a wealth of relatively untouched nature that supports far more biological diversity than can be found in Western Europe. The enlargement represents a biodiversity bonanza for the EU, but millions of humans inhabit the post-Communist countryside, too, tending cultural landscapes rich with local and national meanings. EU accession has thus raised profound questions about post-Communist nature management. Should priority be given to biodiversity conservation at the continental scale, or to maintaining peopled landscapes and traditional land-use patterns? This article examines the confrontation between global and local understandings of nature through a case study of two Western-supported initiatives in national park management in Latvia in the late 1990s. Some Latvians, seeing hope for national development only through an internationalist embrace of globalization and regional integration, appropriated the Western narratives of biodiversity and rural economic diversification. But others resisted these narratives as threatening to agrarian notions of the value of rural landscapes: notions rooted in a potent agrarian discourse of national identity. What internationalists saw as a savvy embrace of the globalization of nature, agrarians denounced as a sort of self-imposed neo-colonialism.

Affaires frontalières : transformations socio-économiques à Ratanakiri (Cambodge du nord-est)

In Ratanakiri, a remote northeastern province of Cambodia, rapid involvement in recent regional Southeast Asian economic developments results in changes in economic and social structures, and broad development processes and local livelihoods have become intertwined. Population growth, lowland Khmer immigration, commercial plantations, and logging increase pressure on land, with changes in land use showing in the landscape. Increasing numbers of highlanders practicing swidden farming and collecting non-timber forest products will soon have to altogether abandon traditional patterns and seek alternative sources of livelihood. This strongly argues for better land distribution and land-use planning, including recognition of indigenous peoples’ traditional land-use patterns and rights, lest they be forcibly displaced or marginalized within their own territories.

Effect of forest fragmentation on the woody flora of the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico

This study was conducted in the Chiapas Highlands, a tropical mountain region where traditional agricultural practices have resulted in a mosaic landscape of forest fragments embedded in a matrix of secondary vegetation and crop fields. The question addressed was how may woody species richness be affected by forest fragment attributes derived from traditional land-use patterns. Species inventories of total woody species, canopy and understorey trees, and shrubs were obtained in 22 forest fragments (≥5 ha). Multiple regression analyses were applied to examine the effects of size, matrix, isolation and shape of the forest fragments on richness of these species guilds. Fragment size was correlated with shape (r = 0.75) and isolation (r = −0.69), and isolation was correlated with shape (r = −0.75). Total species richness, and number of shrubs and understorey trees in fragments were related to isolation; moreover, additive effects of fragment shape were found for shrubs. The number of canopy species was not related to any fragment variable. Matrix did not help to explain species richness, possibly due to the landscape structure created by the traditional land-use patterns. In addition to size and isolation, we point out the need of considering shape and matrix as additional fragmentation attributes, along with social and economic factors, if we are ever going to be successful in our management and conservation actions.

Land-Use Change in Finistère during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

L'utilisation traditionnelle du sol dans le Finistère aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles. L'utilisation traditionnelle du sol dans le Finistère a été considérée par beaucoup comme des plus retardataires en France, à cause essentiellement des grandes étendues de landes qui occupaient près des deux-cinquièmes du département en 1792. Pourtant les régions côtières bénéficiaient à la fois de hauts rendements en céréales et de façons culturales indiquant qu'il s'agissait de régions agricoles développées. Goémon, varech, sable étaient employés pour réduire l'acidité des sols, mais jusque vers 1850 seule la côte a bénéficié de ces traitements. Par la suite, une série de mesures législatives et de facteurs techniques qui freinaient la mise en valeur disparurent, alors que progressaient rapidement l'éducation agricole et la construction de routes. Les fertilisants, anciens et nouveaux, furent utilisés plus largement ; les surfaces consacrées aux céréales améliorées, aux prairies artificielles et aux pommes de terre s'étendirent ; le seigle et les friches perdirent du terrain. Les landes passèrent de 272 653 ha (42,4 % du Finistère) vers 1830 à 183 062 ha (28,5 %) en 1908.

Changing Land-Use Pattern in Rurban Confomity Development with Special Emphasis on Agricultural Cooperative Activities

In these days, we can no longer view urban and rural areas as contradictory, conflicting, or even competing concepts. Instead, these areas must now be studied as a unity coexisting in a complimentary relationship, which hereafter will be referred to as rurban areas.The aim of this paper is to investigate if urband-rural consolidation is possible in Japan, what the prerequisite conditions are, and what means are necessary for planned consolidation in accordance with future changes. Rurban conformity development, conceived to cope with the socio-economic evnironment of the 1960's, including urban concentration, shortage of housing and residential land, soaring land prices, deteriorating urban and rural life environments, wanton mamipulation of real estate markets, sprawlish development, and changing aspirations among the rural population, is examined as one means of achieving such planned consolidation and traditional land-use patterns are studied for possible change. At the same time, asking what characterizes local communities formed through rurban conformity development, the writer reviews agricultural cooperative life, categorizes cooperative approaches to such development into four types, and considers the outlook for regional develpment. Case studies are also provided of land readjustment enterprises Takamatsu region and the “Co-op Town Asahiga-oka” developed Asa-cho in Hiroshima Prefecture.