Tag: climate change

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“A fine line: new computer program predicts when human impact becomes too much”

Village by an Amazonian river (photo by Jose Fragoso)

We have completed a major work describing the sustainability of hunting, farming (land use) and local livelihoods in the tropics. We devised an agent based computer simulation model and explored the relationships between the above mentioned elements to consider what the future may hold for tropical forest biota, ecosystems and peoples.

Stanford University, Mongabay and others published news reports about the work. You can view two here: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/june/amazon-sustainability-model-061314.html

and  http://news.mongabay.com/2014/0703-morgan-indigenous-model.html

Article:

Iwamura T., Lambin E., Silvius K.M., Luzar J.B. & Fragoso J.M.V. 2014. Agent-based modeling of hunting and subsistence agriculture on indigenous lands: understanding interactions between social and ecological systems. Environmental Modelling & Software, 58: 109-127.

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“Assessing Carbon Stock Value of Forests is Tricky Business”

Dr. Kye Epps instructs Makushi field researchers on measuring trees for carbon estimation
Dr. Kye Epps instructs Makushi field researchers on measuring trees for carbon estimation (photo by Han Overman)

Mongabay’s Sanhya Sekar  wrote two articles concerning the Fragoso Group’s work with indigenous people’s field measurements of tropical forest carbon stocks.  Sekar writes  “With financial incentives encouraging maintenance of carbon stocks and the increased popularity of carbon trading between countries, a forest has become economically a lot more than a clump of trees that supplements livelihoods. A forest now has an intrinsic value by just existing, a value that can be measured in economic terms.”

The Mongabay articles can be seen here: http://news.mongabay.com/2015/02/assessing-carbon-stock-value-of-forests-is-tricky-business-study-finds/

CITATION: Butt, N., Epps, K., Overman, H., Iwamura, T., & Fragoso, J. M.V. (2015). Assessing carbon stocks using indigenous peoples’ field measurements in Amazonian Guyana. Forest Ecology and Management, 338, 191-199.

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