Protected areas' impacts on Brazilian Amazon deforestation: Examining conservation - Development interactions to inform planning

• Protected areas are the leading forest conservation policy for species and ecoservices goals and they may feature in climate policy if countries with tropical forest rely on familiar tools. For Brazil's Legal Amazon, we estimate the average impact of protection upon deforestation and show how protected areas?forest impacts vary significantly with development pressure.We use matching, i.e., comparisons that are apples-to-apples in observed land characteristics, to address the fact that protected areas (PAs) tend to be located on lands facing less pressure. Correcting for that location bias lowers our estimates of PAs?forest impacts by roughly half. Further, it reveals significant variation in PA impacts along development- related dimensions: for example, the PAs that are closer to roads and the PAs closer to cities have higher impact. Planners have multiple conservation and development goals, and are constrained by cost, yet still conservation planning should reflect what our results imply about future impacts of PAs. © 2015 Pfaff et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Ämnesord

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Biologi -- Biofysik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Biological Sciences -- Biophysics (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Geovetenskap och miljövetenskap -- Miljövetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Earth and Related Environmental Sciences -- Environmental Sciences (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

rain

Amazon

apple

biophysics

Brazilian

cost

cultivated land

deforestation

environmental planning

environmental protection

ethnic group

forest

human

landscape

prediction

protected area

slope factor

soil fertility

soil quality

vegetation

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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art (ämneskategori)