Revealing Regional Deforestation Dynamics in North-Eastern Madagascar—Insights from Multi-Temporal Land Cover Change Analysis

Julie G. Zaehringer, Sandra Eckert and Peter Messerli
Additional contact information
Julie G. Zaehringer: Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern, Hallerstrasse 10, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland
Sandra Eckert: Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern, Hallerstrasse 10, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland
Peter Messerli: Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern, Hallerstrasse 10, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland

Land, 2015, vol. 4, issue 2, 1-21

Abstract: The north-eastern escarpment of Madagascar harbours the island’s last remaining large-scale humid forest massifs surrounded by a small-scale agricultural mosaic. There is high deforestation, commonly thought to be caused by shifting cultivation practiced by local land users to produce upland rice. However, little is known about the dynamics between forest and shifting cultivation systems at a regional level. Our study presents a first attempt to quantify changes in the extent of forest and different agricultural land cover classes, and to identify the main dynamics of land cover change for two intervals, 1995–2005 and 2005–2011. Over the 16-year study period, the speed of forest loss increased, the total area of upland rice production remained almost stable, and the area of irrigated rice fields slightly increased. While our findings seem to confirm a general trend of land use intensification, deforestation through shifting cultivation is still on the rise. Deforestation mostly affects the small forest fragments interspersed in the agricultural mosaic and is slowly leading to a homogenization of the landscape. These findings have important implications for future interventions to slow forest loss in the region, as the processes of agricultural expansion through shifting cultivation versus intensified land use cannot per se be considered mutually exclusive.

Keywords: land cover changes; Landsat; meso-scale; humid forest; shifting cultivation; land use intensification; deforestation; Analanjirofo (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/2/454/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/2/454/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:4:y:2015:i:2:p:454-474:d:50404

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().