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Dramatic cropland expansion in Myanmar following political reforms threatens biodiversity

Effective conservation planning needs to consider the threats of cropland expansion to biodiversity. We used Myanmar as a case study to devise a modeling framework to identify which Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) are most vulnerable to cropland expansion in a context of increasingly resolved armed co...

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Autores principales: Zhang, Yuchen, Prescott, Graham W., Tay, Rebecca E., Dickens, Borame L., Webb, Edward L., Htun, Saw, Tizard, Robert J., Rao, Madhu, Carrasco, Luis Roman
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6224574/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30409993
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-34974-8
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author Zhang, Yuchen
Prescott, Graham W.
Tay, Rebecca E.
Dickens, Borame L.
Webb, Edward L.
Htun, Saw
Tizard, Robert J.
Rao, Madhu
Carrasco, Luis Roman
author_facet Zhang, Yuchen
Prescott, Graham W.
Tay, Rebecca E.
Dickens, Borame L.
Webb, Edward L.
Htun, Saw
Tizard, Robert J.
Rao, Madhu
Carrasco, Luis Roman
author_sort Zhang, Yuchen
collection PubMed
description Effective conservation planning needs to consider the threats of cropland expansion to biodiversity. We used Myanmar as a case study to devise a modeling framework to identify which Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) are most vulnerable to cropland expansion in a context of increasingly resolved armed conflict. We studied 13 major crops with the potential to expand into KBAs. We used mixed-effects models and an agricultural versus forest rent framework to model current land use and conversion of forests to cropland for each crop. We found that the current cropland distribution is explained by higher agricultural value, lower transportation costs and lower elevation. We also found that protected areas and socio-political instability are effective in slowing down deforestation with conflicts in Myanmar damaging farmland and displacing farmers elsewhere. Under plausible economic development and socio-political stability scenarios, the models forecast 48.5% of land to be converted. We identified export crops such as maize, and pigeon pea as key deforestation drivers. This cropland expansion would pose a major threat to Myanmar’s freshwater KBAs. We highlight the importance of considering rapid land-use transitions in the tropics to devise robust conservation plans.
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spelling pubmed-62245742018-11-13 Dramatic cropland expansion in Myanmar following political reforms threatens biodiversity Zhang, Yuchen Prescott, Graham W. Tay, Rebecca E. Dickens, Borame L. Webb, Edward L. Htun, Saw Tizard, Robert J. Rao, Madhu Carrasco, Luis Roman Sci Rep Article Effective conservation planning needs to consider the threats of cropland expansion to biodiversity. We used Myanmar as a case study to devise a modeling framework to identify which Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) are most vulnerable to cropland expansion in a context of increasingly resolved armed conflict. We studied 13 major crops with the potential to expand into KBAs. We used mixed-effects models and an agricultural versus forest rent framework to model current land use and conversion of forests to cropland for each crop. We found that the current cropland distribution is explained by higher agricultural value, lower transportation costs and lower elevation. We also found that protected areas and socio-political instability are effective in slowing down deforestation with conflicts in Myanmar damaging farmland and displacing farmers elsewhere. Under plausible economic development and socio-political stability scenarios, the models forecast 48.5% of land to be converted. We identified export crops such as maize, and pigeon pea as key deforestation drivers. This cropland expansion would pose a major threat to Myanmar’s freshwater KBAs. We highlight the importance of considering rapid land-use transitions in the tropics to devise robust conservation plans. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-11-08 /pmc/articles/PMC6224574/ /pubmed/30409993 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-34974-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Zhang, Yuchen
Prescott, Graham W.
Tay, Rebecca E.
Dickens, Borame L.
Webb, Edward L.
Htun, Saw
Tizard, Robert J.
Rao, Madhu
Carrasco, Luis Roman
Dramatic cropland expansion in Myanmar following political reforms threatens biodiversity
title Dramatic cropland expansion in Myanmar following political reforms threatens biodiversity
title_full Dramatic cropland expansion in Myanmar following political reforms threatens biodiversity
title_fullStr Dramatic cropland expansion in Myanmar following political reforms threatens biodiversity
title_full_unstemmed Dramatic cropland expansion in Myanmar following political reforms threatens biodiversity
title_short Dramatic cropland expansion in Myanmar following political reforms threatens biodiversity
title_sort dramatic cropland expansion in myanmar following political reforms threatens biodiversity
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6224574/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30409993
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-34974-8
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