New paper out in Environmental Research Letters
In a new paper in Environmental Research Letters we present the most comprehensive reconstruction of land-use change in the Chaco for the past 35 years. In addition, we present a new way of translating time series of land cover change into systemic metrics, that allow for a more processed-based understanding of frontier expansion in modern commodity frontiers.
Image credit: Tobias Kümmerle
Deforestation in the tropics leads to biodiversity loss, carbon emissions, and the spread of zoonotic diseases. On much of the deforestation land, agricultural commodities such as beef or soybean are produced that are then shipped around the world, including to Europe and Germany. “If we want to make sure that that the products sold in our supermarkets are not linked to tropical deforestation, we need good maps about where deforestation is happening and what is produced on these lands afterwards”, says Matthias Baumann, researcher at the Geography Department of Humboldt-University Berlin. “For many regions, however, we currently lack such maps.”
In a new study published in Environmental Research Letters, and international team of researchers from Germany, Argentina, the Netherlands, Belgium and Canada provide the most comprehensive reconstruction of deforestation during the past 35 years in the Gran Chaco – a 1.1 million km² ecoregion in Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay. “The main innovation of this work is that we provide a consistent and detailed picture of how deforestation progresses, including whether deforestation occurs rapidly or slowly, how deforested lands are used afterwards, and in what condition remaining forests are”, Tobias Kuemmerle, professor at the Geography Department of HU Berlin explains. “The Chaco is really a global deforestation hotspot, with more than 19.3 million ha of forest lost. This is more than half the size of Germany!”
“What was surprising is was that nearly 40% of the deforested areas were initially used for cattle ranching but later were converted to croplands, for example to produce soy.” Matthias Baumann explains. “Knowing where land-use changes after deforestation occur is really important, because we might otherwise attribute deforestation to the wrong commodities.”
“We also found that on about 30% of all deforestation land nothing really happened, and these lands were never used for agriculture”, Tobias Kuemmerle remarks. The researchers highlight that many explanations are possible for this finding, for example land speculation, farmers that run out of money, or that deforest now because they fear it might become illegal in the future. “Clearly, this is a huge environmental issue as such deforestation contributes nothing to agricultural production but still leads to major biodiversity loss and carbon emissions in the Chaco”. According to the researchers, such patterns might be common around the world. “For most regions of the world, we know where and when deforestation occurred, but not what happens with these lands afterwards. We really need more and better monitoring of post-deforestation changes if we want to clean our supply chains from environmental impacts”, Baumann concludes.
