Biocomplexity: Incubation Activity
Human Actions and
Land-Use/Land Cover Change

A list of Issues & Questions for the Invited Papers

Theory: What theoretical framework guided the research, if any? What substantive questions were asked? What conceptual/theoretical frameworks are most appropriate for the study of human impacts on land use/cover?

Design: Was the project planned and the study site selected to address specific questions or were they set through other factors? What study design was used? Was there temporal depth in the social, natural, and spatial science data? What do you think are the most appropriate space and time scales to address your substantive question(s)?

Design/Sampling: How large was the household/community sample size used in your research, and how was it determined? What factors constrained the determination of sample size? Would you have preferred a different design or a larger sample to answer the same question(s)? To what extent can the results be generalized beyond the study area?

Design/Social: Who were the social survey respondents and how were they selected? It is sometimes argued that urban residents with their disproportionate needs for agricultural and forest products have considerable influence on land use and land cover. Did you try to address what and how much influence such households, who do not own or directly use land (except living on it), have on land use and land cover? What specific problems did you face in collecting social science data from households/communities?

Design/Households: How did you deal with the ever-changing nature of household? Did you accompany households to the plots or asked them about their land-use activities at home? Some households do not own or cultivate any land, some cultivate other's land, some own many parcels of land, in some cases many households may jointly own a land parcel, some households may own land outside the study area and some land may be owned by households from outside the study area, some households may sell their land parcel or a part of it, some households may split, and other household may move. How did you link households to their land and how did you overcome such challenges? How did you link households to common property resources, government owned lands, forests, etc.? In some cases, more than one household may lay claim on the same land parcel or the parcel boundaries may be contested. In other situations, land records may have one set of information and field situation may be different both in terms of boundaries and actual ownership. How did you deal with such contested land? Were there mismatch problems between land use/cover data collected from the households or communities and the remotely sensed data?

Design/Community: What participatory assessment techniques did you use and how did you choose them (i.e., semi-structured interviews, focus groups, sketch mapping, crop calendars, aerial photographs and maps as interviewing tools, taking groups to view the landscape, etc.)? Did you modify your questions as you learned through your interviews? Did you cross-check your answers through other forms of observation? How did you choose your respondents/key informants? Did you use an interdisciplinary team?

Design/Spatial: How did you design your spatial approach? Was it driven by the available data or did you collect your own data? How did you determine your land-cover categories and conduct your classification? How did you ground truth it? What problems did you have in obtaining time-series spatial data? What problems did you have registering the different layers of remotely sensed data? How did you relate your ground cover data to your household or community data? Did you model?

Operational: What problems were faced in identifying local institutions and collaborators? What challenges were faced in recruiting the field staff and providing training? Could the training be standardized? Did you have to combine remote sensing data with GPS and GIS data to address your questions? Were there problems in obtaining remote sensing data and/or other spatial data at the spatial resolutions needed to address the study questions?

Practical: What financial/cost constraints were experienced? Did those constraints affect the study design, sample size, access to remote sensing data at appropriate resolutions, etc.? Were there confidentiality issues that you had to address? Were there problems related to receiving necessary government approvals, community participation, response rates, etc.? What specific challenges did your project face working with people from different disciplines, backgrounds? What were the surprises in terms of cost, design, findings, etc.?

Overview: If you had the opportunity to design your study from scratch today, how would you go about doing it? What mistakes you would not want to repeat? What you think are the major challenges and opportunities for researchers interested in understanding the household and community impacts on LUCC (or human impacts on LUCC, in general)?

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