Deforestation in Nepal threatens the functioning of complex social-ecological systems, including rural populations that depend on forests for subsistence, as well as Nepal's biodiversity and other ecosystem services. Nepal's forests are particularly important to the nation's poorest inhabitants, as many depend upon them for daily survival. Two-thirds of Nepal's population relies on forests for ...

We review the literature and find 16 studies from across Africa's savannas and woodlands where woody encroachment dominates. These small-scale studies are supplemented by an analysis of long-term continent-wide satellite data, specifically the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) time series from the Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies (GIMMS) dataset. Using dry-season data t...

The carbon budget of the tropics has been perturbed as a result of human influences. Here, we attempt to construct a 'bottom-up' analysis of the biological components of the budget as they are affected by human activities. There are major uncertainties in the extent and carbon content of different vegetation types, the rates of land-use change and forest degradation, but recent developments in ...

Habitat loss and climate change pose a double jeopardy for many threatened taxa, making the identification of optimal habitat for the future a conservation priority. Using a case study of the endangered Bornean orang-utan, we identify environmental refuges by integrating bioclimatic models with projected deforestation and oil-palm agriculture suitability from the 1950s to 2080s. We coupled a ma...

National income accounting has been criticized because of its failure to encompass the notion of sustainability. Several studies address this problem through ‘green’ income accounting — i.e. by adjusting conventionally measured GDP for reduction in a given country’s ‘stock’ of natural resources. These studies generally base value on the unit net price of the resource. Other studies go beyond ne...

Throughout the last century, protected areas (PAs) have been the major policy instrument for forest conservation worldwide, as well as in the Republic of Panama. The country has strived to lower the decline in its tropical forest cover which is rich in biodiversity. The importance of evaluating existing forest policies has been increasing, especially with emergence of financial incentives given...

In a general discrete time model of optimal forest management where land may be diverted to alternative use and stocks of standing trees may yield flow benefits, we investigate the economic and ecological conditions under which optimal paths lead to (total) deforestation i.e., complete long term removal of forest cover. We show that if deforestation occurs from some initial state, then it must ...

While previous empirical analysis of deforestation focused on population, this paper builds from a model of land use which suggests many determinants of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. I derive a deforestation equation from this model and test a number of those factors using county-level data for the period 1978]1988. The data include a satellite deforestation measure which allows improv...

Many major corporations and countries have made commitments to purchase or produce only "sustainable" palm oil, a commodity responsible for substantial tropical forest loss. Sustainability certification is the tool most used to fulfill these procurement policies, and around 20% of global palm oil production was certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in 2017. However, the eff...

Understanding the interplay between climate and land-use dynamics is a fundamental concern for assessing the vulnerability of Amazonia to climate change. In this study, we analyse satellite-derived monthly and annual time series of rainfall, fires and deforestation to explicitly quantify the seasonal patterns and relationships between these three variables, with a particular focus on the Amazon...