PARENT SESSION
Symposium 3: Complex Interactions Between Human Population and the Environment: Integrating Demographic, Socioeconomic, and Ecological Perspectives .
Organized by: Jianguo(Jack) Liu and RL Clark
Monday, August 2, 8:00 AM to 11:30 AM, Oregon Ballroom 204.
Mapping and modeling land use/land cover dynamics in northeast Thailand.
Walsh, Stephen*,1, Rindfuss, Ronald 1, Entwisle, Barbara1, Malanson, George1, Messina, Joseph1, 1 University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
ABSTRACT- People, place, and environment in Northeast Thailand are linked in interesting and complex ways. Exogenous and endogenous factors combine through social, biophysical, and geographical relationships to affect land use/land cover (LULC) change patterns that vary over space and through time. Nang Rong district is an agricultural region characterized by resource marginality, cultivation of lowland paddy rice and upland field crops, and circular population migration patterns in response to economic, social, and environmental factors. Using a comprehensive longitudinal social survey conducted at the household level, a remote sensing image time-series that extends from 1973 to the present for satellite data and back to 1954 for air-photos, and a geographic information system (GIS) detailing resource endowments, village and dwelling unit locations, and measures of geographic accessibility, LULC dynamics are mapped and modeled to explore deforestation and agricultural extensification and the associated pattern-process relationships. Emphasis is placed on the study of population migration, changing demographics of the household and village, and changes in landscape composition and spatial structure of LULC types through feedbacks and scale dependencies. Operating at the pixel, household, and village levels for intra-annual, inter-annual, and decadal periods, statistical and spatial models are used to examine the causes and consequences of LULC dynamics. Statistical models examine the spatial scale dependence of drivers of landscape change and how social, biophysical, and geographical factors are related to LULC changes at various time periods. Spatial models are used to simulate LULC patterns and dynamics using cellular automata (CA) and agent based models (ABM). CA models integrate initial conditions, growth or transition rules, and neighborhood effects on LULC patterns, whereas ABM are used to examine the pattern of nuclear village settlement patterns throughout Nang Rong district. Findings indicate the importance of feedback mechanisms, globalization factors, local resource endowments and terrain settings, and critical population-environment interactions in defining the composition and spatial organization of LULC dynamics in Northeast Thailand.
Key words: Scale Dependence, Northeast Thailand, Land Use/Land Cover, Statistical and Spatial Models