Land-Cover and Land-Use Change in the Brazilian Amazon: Smallholders, Ranchers, and Frontier Stratification

Stephen P. Aldrich, Robert T. Walker, Eugenio Y. Arima, Marcellus M. Caldas, John O. Browder and Stephen Perz

Economic Geography, 2006, vol. 82, issue 3, 265-288

Abstract: Tropical deforestation is a significant driver of global environmental change, given its impacts on the carbon cycle and biodiversity. Loss of the Amazon forest, the focus of this article, is of particular concern because of the size and the rapid rate at which the forest is being converted to agricultural use. In this article, we identify what has been the most important driver of deforestation in a specific colonization frontier in the Brazilian Amazon. To this end, we consider (1) the land-use dynamics of smallholder households, (2) the formation of pasture by large-scale ranchers, and (3) structural processes of land aggregation by ranchers. Much has been written about relations between smallholders and ranchers in the Brazilian Amazon, particularly those involving conflict over land, and this article explicates the implications of such social processes for land cover. Toward this end, we draw on panel data (1996–2002) and satellite imagery (1986–1999) to show the deforestation that is attributable to small- and largeholders, and the deforestation that is attributable to aggregations of property arising from a process that we refer to as frontier stratification. Evidently, most of the recent deforestation in the study area has resulted from the household processes of smallholders, not from conversions to pasture pursuant to the appropriations of smallholders’ property by well-capitalized ranchers or speculators.

Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1944-8287.2006.tb00311.x (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:recgxx:v:82:y:2006:i:3:p:265-288

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/recg20

DOI: 10.1111/j.1944-8287.2006.tb00311.x

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Geography is currently edited by James Murphy

More articles in Economic Geography from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().