The project is supported under the NSF Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability Fellows (SEES Fellows) program, with the goal of helping to enable discoveries needed to inform actions that lead to environmental, energy and societal sustainability while creating the necessary workforce to address these challenges. Sustainability science is an emerging field that addresses the challenges of meeting human needs without harm to the environment, and without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their needs. A strong scientific workforce requires individuals educated and trained in interdisciplinary research and thinking, especially in the area of sustainability science. With the SEES Fellowship support, this project will enable a promising early career researcher to establish himself in an independent research career related to sustainability.
This Fellow's project will examine how cash crop production affects forest conservation under Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) programs. Forests provide many valuable services, such as soil erosion control and biodiversity, which can be very important for nearby agriculture, and carbon sequestration, which can help slow global climate change. PES programs use incentives to urge landowners to plant and maintain forests on their land in order to create such benefits. However, the success of such programs is varied and appears to depend on social and economic factors that are not fully understood - particularly the tradeoffs between land-use and resource-use. Scientists now debate whether the production of cash-crops can enhance forest conservation by reducing the pressure to extract resources from forests. This project employs an interdisciplinary approach to study both the socioeconomic and ecological dimensions of the relationship between cash-crops and forest regeneration. A better understanding of the linkages between household decision-making, public policy, and forest conditions could help refine forest conservation programs so that they maximize both human and environment wellbeing.
This research will examine how varying patterns of cash crop adoption affect forests under China's Grain-to-Green Program, which compensates households for planting forests on retired farmland. Ten communities will be selected in Weixi County, Yunnan Province, varying by whether the community organizes collectively to plant and market cash crops, households individually adopt cash crops, or cash crops are absent. Data will be gathered to test three core hypotheses: (1) at the household level, cash crop production leads to less withdrawal of forest resources; (2) across communities, forest use intensity is greatest where cash crops are absent and least where cash crops are adopted collectively; and (3) plant diversity and carbon sequestration correlate negatively with intensity of forest resource use. Data collection will include a survey of household livelihoods; a sub-survey on resource use, including respondent-led mapping of forest use; field measurements in planted forests selected to control for elevation, slope, aspect, and proximity to pre-existing forests; and remotely sensed satellite imagery. Analyses will assess effects of household and community factors on different resource uses and their relationships with forest measures at plot and landscape levels. By comparing across communities in a landscape, this research will capture meso-level mechanisms that regional and household studies have neglected so far.
