DEFORESTATION AROUND THE WORLD Edited by Paulo Moutinho Deforestation Around the World Edited by Paulo Moutinho Published by InTech Janeza Trdine 9, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia Copyright © 2012 InTech All chapters are Open Access distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles even for commercial purposes, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. After this work has been published by InTech, authors have the right to republish it, in whole or part, in any publication of which they are the author, and to make other personal use of the work. Any republication, referencing or personal use of the work must explicitly identify the original source. As for readers, this license allows users to download, copy and build upon published chapters even for commercial purposes, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. Notice Statements and opinions expressed in the chapters are these of the individual contributors and not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the published chapters. The publisher assumes no responsibility for any damage or injury to persons or property arising out of the use of any materials, instructions, methods or ideas contained in the book. Publishing Process Manager Maja Bozicevic Technical Editor Teodora Smiljanic Cover Designer InTech Design Team First published March, 2012 Printed in Croatia A free online edition of this book is available at www.intechopen.com Additional hard copies can be obtained from orders@intechopen.com Deforestation Around the World, Edited by Paulo Moutinho p. cm. ISBN 978-953-51-0417-9 Contents Preface IX Part 1 Deforestation Impacts 1 Chapter 1 The Climatic Effects of Deforestation in South and Southeast Asia 3 Rachindra Mawalagedara and Robert J. Oglesby Chapter 2 Impacts of Deforestation on Climate and Water Resources in Western Amazon 21 Ranyére Silva Nóbrega Chapter 3 Deforestation and Water Borne Parasitic Zoonoses 35 Maria Anete Lallo Chapter 4 Impact of Deforestation on the Sustainability of Biodiversity in the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor 49 Vani Starry Manoharan, John Mecikalski, Ronald Welch and Aaron Song Chapter 5 Dinaric Karst – An Example of Deforestation and Desertification of Limestone Terrain 73 Andrej Kranjc Chapter 6 Landslides Caused Deforestation 95 Diandong Ren, Lance M. Leslie and Qingyun Duan Chapter 7 Deforestation Dynamics: A Review and Evaluation of Theoretical Approaches and Evidence from Greece 123 Serafeim Polyzos and Dionysios Minetos Part 2 Mapping Deforestation 143 Chapter 8 Geospatial Analysis of Deforestation and Land Use Dynamics in a Region of Southwestern Nigeria 145 Nathaniel O. Adeoye, Albert A. Abegunde and Samson Adeyinka VI Contents Chapter 9 Unsupervised Classification of Aerial Images Based on the Otsu’s Method 171 Antonia Macedo-Cruz, I. Villegas-Romero, M. Santos-Peñas and G. Pajares-Martinsanz Chapter 10 Deforestation and Waodani Lands in Ecuador: Mapping and Demarcation Amidst Shaky Politics 187 Anthony Stocks, Andrew Noss, Malgorzata Bryja and Santiago Arce Chapter 11 Sustainable Forest Management Techniques 203 K.P. Chethan, Jayaraman Srinivasan, Kumar Kriti and Kaki Sivaji Chapter 12 Bunjil Forest Watch a Community-Based Forest Monitoring Service 229 Chris Goodman Chapter 13 Remnant Vegetation Analysis of Guanabara Bay Basin, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Using Geographical Information System 253 Luzia Alice Ferreira de Moraes Part 3 Preventing Deforestation 281 Chapter 14 Preserving Biodiversity and Ecosystems: Catalyzing Conservation Contagion 283 Robert H. Horwich, Jonathan Lyon, Arnab Bose and Clara B. Jones Chapter 15 Efficiency of the Strategies to Prevent and Mitigate the Deforestation in Costa Rica 319 Óscar M. Chaves Chapter 16 Agroforestry Systems and Local Institutional Development for Preventing Deforestation in Chiapas, Mexico 333 Lorena Soto-Pinto, Miguel A. Castillo-Santiago and Guillermo Jiménez-Ferrer Chapter 17 Economic Models of Shifting Cultivation: A Review 351 Yoshito Takasaki Preface Forests are giant reservoirs of carbon and biodiversity that must remain largely intact if we want to bring global warming under control and preserve life on earth. However, over the last decade, 13 million ha/year of forests have been deforested in the word. South America and Africa present the highest deforestation rates (> 3.4 million ha/yr) and forest losses were also intense in many places of Asia. Although studies don’t always agree, they generally indicate that deforestation causes are related to infrastructure investments, expansions of agricultural and pasture frontiers, land tenure issues, absence of adequate surveillance by the government, high demand for forest products (wood), rural settlements, mining, and logging. International growing demand for commodities and global land crises can also affect deforestation. Consequently, the impacts resulting from deforestation can include changes in the rainfall regime - increasing the risk of forest fires during dry seasons - negative changes on river level and on the quality of water, as well as enormous biodiversity losses, considering that more than half of the animals and plants living on the planet live in forests. Deforestation also dramatically affects human population living in or from the forests. Indigenous peoples and traditional communities -the natural guardians of the forests - have seen their territories been reduced or invaded by deforesters. However, they are the most promising alternative to protect the forests and simultaneously create a sustainable economy based on forest products. Despite global consequences, deforestation presents local/regional-based dynamics. This book provides a general view about this dynamics, incorporating the diversity of causes, impacts and actions to prevent deforestation in several places around the world. The chapters are divided in three sections: (I) Deforestation Impacts, (III) Mapping Deforestation, and (II) Preventing Deforestation. Chapter 1 (Oglesby) discusses the impacts of land cover changes on the climate in South and Southeast Asia, and Chapter 2 (Nóbrega) presents the effects of deforestation on the climate and hydrological cycle in Rondonia state, Brazil, that can have potential effects on the biodiversity, as indicated by Chapter 3’s (Lallo) study on parasites population in Brazil. Chapter 4 (Manoharan and colleagues), describes how deforestation and changes in physical and climate parameters could affect the potential of environmental protection provided by the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor (Central America). Then, Chapter 5 (Kranjc) exemplifies the large X Preface environmental consequences of deforestation in the Dinaric Karst region, Slovenia, and finally, Chapter 6 (Diandong et al.) shows how disturbs caused by landslides can provoke vegetation losses at landscape scale. The first section is closed by Chapter 7 (Polyzos et al.) and relates the forest land use changes in Greece and how it has affected the regional and economic development. The next section, Mapping Deforestation, begins with Chapter 8 by Adeoye et al. They use a set of images data to analyze the historical deforestation in southwestern Nigeria demonstrating the potential of the remote-sensing and GIS technology for forest conservation. Chapter 9 (Macedo-Cruz, et al.) suggests a new remote-sensing methodology, an unsupervised classification method, with potential to map deforestation. Stocks et al. (Chapter 10) demonstrate how deforestation mapping is important for forest protection in the Waodani indigenous land, Ecuador, and Chapter 11 (Jayaraman et al.) discusses the potential of the Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) as an accessible and low cost technology that could be useful to monitor the environment in a large area. Chapter 12 (Goodman) proposes a free public online service to map the recent forest disturbances in one particular area and explains how it could attend local communities. Finally, Chapter 13 (De Moraes) provides a time- series of land-cover in the Guanabara Bay Basin, Brazil, to demonstrate how remote sensing data is essential to measure the critical changes in vegetation remnants of Atlantic Forest, the most deforested forest in Brazil, to offer better information for decision-makers. On the last section, Preventing Deforestation, Chapter 14 (Horwich et al.) demonstrates how the community-based initiatives positively affect the conservation of forests in three different countries, Belize, Namibia and India. Chapter 15 (Chaves) bring us a review on the potential of different conservation strategies (ecotourism, payments for environmental services, private reserves, and environmental education) to mitigate deforestation in Costa Rica. Chapter 16 (Soto-Pinto et al.) reveals how a sustainable production (agroforestry), reforestation and forest conservation - developed by the Scolel Té project is dealing with deforestation in Chiapas State, Mexico. Finally, the Chapter 17 (Taksaki) provides a critical review on how economic models for shifting cultivation and deforestation are presented by economists and how these models can be related to deforestation dynamics. I hope the study-cases reported here may call attention for the velocity we are losing our forests in a planetary scale and for inestimable impact that will have in human life quality, in wild life, in water, soil and air and in the world economy. To keep it short, it won’t be a surprise if the cost to fix the losses would overcome the investments we have done to achieve the present unsustainable development. I am grateful to InTech for the opportunity to edit this volume and the authors with whom I learned so much about the issues of deforestation around the world. I am also . DEFORESTATION AROUND THE WORLD Edited by Paulo Moutinho Deforestation Around the World Edited by Paulo Moutinho Published. places around the world. The chapters are divided in three sections: (I) Deforestation Impacts, (III) Mapping Deforestation, and (II) Preventing Deforestation. Chapter 1 (Oglesby) discusses the. for the opportunity to edit this volume and the authors with whom I learned so much about the issues of deforestation around the world. I am also Preface XI thankful to Maja Bozicevic, the