Agricultural potential as an indicator for 21st century land use change across South America?s ecoregions

ZARBÁ, L; GRAU, H RICARDO; GASPARRI, IGNÁCIO; GRAESSER J; AIDE TM

Posadas, Misiones

Congreso; IUFRO Conference; 2018

IUFRO-INTA

Cropland and pastureland are expanding throughout Latin America, and they often are replacing forest ecosystems. Commodity production for export is proposed as one of the main drivers of this expansion, and indirectly these changes induce other land use changes (e.g. low profit agriculture abandonment, rural-urban migration). Previous studies found a segregated pattern of expansion and reorganization of the different land uses across the continent, suggesting that geography plays an important role in these dynamics. Foresee which ecoregions move in each direction is important for contextualizing land use change pattern comparisons, informing policy and planning efforts to maximize land use efficiency. In this study, we created a map that tried to capture the agribusiness investor viewpoint as a major agent of change. Specifically, we were interested in which ecoregions are more likely to undergo similar transformation dynamics and what type of agricultural activities may occur in the different ecosystems? To address this questions we proposed a typification of agricultural potential as an indicator of the overall land use change processes expected in each ecoregion based on three attributes: (i) aptitude for mechanized agriculture, (ii) aptitude for rain-fed agriculture, and (iii) distance to consumption/distribution centers. In addition, alternative scenarios of quantifying the three attributes with increasing thresholds of tolerance were explored. We grouped the ecoregions through cluster analysis, repeating the analysis for all alternative scenarios (n=48). Finally we analyzed the sensitivity to each attribute and the correlation between the clusters and cropland cover area and cropland cover change over the period 2000-2014. Maps with more flexible thresholds correlated better with patterns of cropland area. Correlation with cropland area showed big sensitivity to accessibility. In general patterns they showed 4 big groups: mountain, relatively wet well connected, flat dry isolated, and flat wet well connected ecoregions.