Examination of migration to agricultural frontiers using temporal and spatial cohorts
William
Kuang-Yao
Pan, Johns Hopkins University, wpan@bios.unc.edu
(Presenting)
Clark
Gray, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, cgray@email.unc.edu
The most salient footprint of human existence on the earth's surface has been the conversion of land to agricultural use. Most forest clearing today occurs within tropical rainforests primarily due to the extensification of small farm plots increasingly into forest and protected areas, threatening to eliminate the planet's most biologically diverse forests within 50 years. Numerous studies and analytical methods have centered human-environment research on clearing patterns, which have identified small farmers as a primary proximate cause of deforestation. However, as research continues to examine the determinants of land use and land cover change (LUCC), key factors often overlooked are the determinants of migration to a given region, settlement to a specific location, and structural effects influencing LUCC. This paper focuses on the latter two-examination of factors influencing settlement to a specific location and structural effects influencing LUCC-since determinants of migration to a given region requires data on origin areas, which we do not currently have available.
The aims are both methodological and substantive, with data extracted from a longitudinal study of migrant colonists in Ecuador's Northern Amazon. Spatial and temporal cohorts will be constructed to examine why households migrate to specific farms (i.e., flat, good soils, along a road, proximity to a market, etc.) and what structural factors influence eventual land cover changes. The focus will be threefold: (1) a discussion of the broad foundation of migration / settlement theory followed by a proposed synthesis that extracts specific factors appropriate to the study context; (2) a methodological introduction to statistical and spatial tools that serves to (a) explain the methods, (b) justify their use in linking theory to application, and (c) demonstrate their flexibility in capturing spatial relationships; and finally (3) to report factors involved in household decisions to settle in specific regions of Ecuador's Northern Amazon.