In her News Feature “An unequal blow” (15 May, p. 700), L. Wade explores how past pandemics disproportionately affected marginalized groups. It is important to recognize that in addition to exacerbating marginalization, pandemics set the stage for …
Journal letter to the editor. Despite international conservation efforts 1, deforestation in the Amazon continues apace. While the current focus is on immediate responses to the crisis, the roots of deforestation are deep, institutional and societal. …
Armed conflict, and its end, can have powerful effects on natural resources, but the influence of war and peace on highly biodiverse tropical forests remains disputed. We found a sixfold increase in fires in protected areas across biodiversity …
For decades coca cultivation has been proposed as a cause of deforestation and attractor of migration to the forest frontier of western Amazonia. Evaluating the effects of coca cultivation has become a priority because averting deforestation has …
Generalized linear models are often used to identify covariates of landscape processes and to model land‐use change. Generalized linear models however, overlook the spatial component of land‐use data, and its effects on statistical inference. Spatial …
Most of the world's coca—the source of cocaine—is grown in the Amazonian forests of Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. As cultivation continues despite eradication, a shift to giving farmers more incentives to abandon coca is currently proposed. Assuming …
Illicit crop cultivation often occurs in forested areas and contributes to deforestation when it results in the clearing of woodland. Moreover, illicit crop cultivation frequently takes place in biodiversity hotspots hosting a large number of species …
For decades, pastures have replaced Amazon forests, threatening biodiversity. Two dominant hypotheses explain this process. First, according to the hamburger connection beef markets promote conversion of forests into cattle ranches resulting in …
Identifying drivers of deforestation in tropical biodiversity hotspots is critical to assess threats to particular ecosystems and species and proactively plan for conservation. We analyzed land cover change between 2002 and 2007 in the northern …