Issues and Questions for 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)?
Workshop Schedule
Participant List with Contact Information
Project Paper List with Survey Questionnaires
Invited Discussants and Papers
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