The rapid economic growth in Lao PDR over the last two decades has been driven by the natural resource sectors and commercialization in the agriculture sector. Rural landscapes are being transformed over the past decade from land use mosaics of subsistence and smallholder farms to large-scale plantations dominated by a few commercial crops.
Land cover change impacts ecosystem function across the globe. The use of land cover data is vital in the detection of these changes over time; however, most available land cover products, such as the National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD), are produced relatively infrequently. The most recent NLCD at the time of this research was produced in 2006 and does not adequately reflect the impact of land cover changes that have occurred since, including the occurrence of two large wildfires in 2008 in our study area.
Agricultural census data and fieldwork observations are used to analyze changes in land cover/use intensity across Rondônia and Mato Grosso states along the agricultural frontier in the Brazilian Amazon. Results show that the development of land use is strongly related to land distribution structure. While large farms have increased their share of annual and perennial crops, small and medium size farms have strongly contributed to the development of beef and milk market chains in both Rondônia and Mato Grosso.
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