Agricultural expansion in the semiarid Chaco poorly selective contagious advance
Clearance for agriculture or cattle ranching was the dominant land-cover change during the last twodecades in the South American Dry Chaco. The Argentinean portion has been particularly affected, pre-senting greater deforestation rates than the continental and global averages. Little is known on the controlfactors of the location and the spatial clearance patterns. In this article we studied [a] deforestationdynamics in the Argentinean Dry Chaco and the factors determining land clearing locations for the last25 years; [b] changes in the relative impact of those factors through time and space; and [c] the effectof regulations aimed to control the location and magnitude of land transformation. We also tested the expansion of the agricultural frontier hypothesis for the Argentinean Chaco. To identify the factors thatdefined agricultural expansion we used binomial logistic models that were fitted to a set of independentvariables [bio-physical, infrastructure and political factors] that could eventually influence the distribu-tion of new agricultural areas. Results indicate that the Forest Law devised by the Argentinean federalgovernment to control the clearing process was insufficient to restrict both the area transformed per yearand clearance locations. Agriculture is expanding over marginal areas and land clearing dynamics havebeen increasingly associated to the proximity to already cleared areas, defining a frontier-advancementpattern which gives the idea of a contagion process. According to our results, the relative importance ofthe anthropic factors associated to the agricultural expansion in the region increased through time.
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Texto biblioteca |
| Language: | eng |
| Subjects: | DEFORESTATION, LAND USE CHANGE, MODELS, DRY CHACO, REMOTE SENSING, , |
| Online Access: | http://ceiba.agro.uba.ar/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=47292 http://ceiba.agro.uba.ar/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber= |
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