A Nation Within

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ezra Rosser

In A Nation Within, Ezra Rosser explores the connection between land-use patterns and development in the Navajo Nation. Roughly the size of Ireland or West Virginia, the Navajo reservation has seen successive waves of natural resource-based development over the last century: grazing and over-grazing, oil and gas, uranium, and coal; yet Navajos continue to suffer from high levels of unemployment and poverty. Rosser shows the connection between the exploitation of these resources and the growth of the tribal government before turning to contemporary land use and development challenges. He argues that, in addition to the political challenges associated with any significant change, external pressures and internal corruption have made it difficult for the tribe to implement land reforms that could help provide space for economic development that would benefit the Navajo Nation and Navajo tribal members.

Author(s):  
Yao Lu ◽  
Min Zhou ◽  
Guoliang Ou ◽  
Zuo Zhang ◽  
Li He ◽  
...  

Land-use allocation models can effectively support sustainable land use. A large number of studies solve the problems of land-use planning by constructing models, such as mathematical models and spatial analysis models. However, these models fail to fully and comprehensively consider three uncertain factors of land-use systems: randomness, interval and fuzziness. 33Therefore, through the study of the watershed land-use system, this paper develops a land-use allocation model considering the regional land–society–economy–environment system under uncertain conditions. On the basis of this model, an interval fuzzy two-stage random land-use allocation model (IFTSP-LUAM) combining social, economic and ecological factors is proposed to provide sustainable development strategies at the basin level. In addition, the proposed IFTSP-LUAM takes into account the above three uncertainties and multistage, multiobjective, dynamic, systematic and complex characteristics of typical land-use planning systems. The results showed that the model considers more socioeconomic and ecological factors and can effectively reflect the quantitative relationship between the increase in economic benefits and the decrease in environmental costs of a land-use system. The model was applied to land-use planning of Nansihu River Basin in Shandong Province. The results provided a series of suitable land-use patterns and environmental emission scenarios under uncertain conditions, which can help the watershed environmental protection bureau and watershed land-use decision-makers to formulate appropriate land-use policies, so as to balance social and economic development and ecological protection. The simulation results can provide support for an in-depth analysis of land-use patterns and the trade-off between economic development and ecological environment protection.


1984 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 99-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. W. Smith

Best known as a major prehistoric ceremonial centre, the Avebury region has also yielded a wealth of information regarding the origins, ecology and development of neolithic farming systems in the chalklands of southern England. This paper draws the various strands of evidence together, considers interpretative problems such as pollen survival, the status of bracken, the significance of forest regrowth, etc., and concludes by reconstructing the interplay between man and his environment during this crucial stage of economic development. Some form of mesolithic participation in early cereal cropping and barrow building is identified, and indeed, in being valley-based from the outset, neolithic settlement and land use patterns form a continuum with what had gone before. The spread of agriculture is seen to have had adverse consequences, not least of which were concomitant bracken invasions. In adapting to these more difficult secondary environments important social and economic changes occurred within the local farming communities.


1993 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordan E. Kerber

Selecting an effective archaeological survey takes careful consideration given the interaction of several variables, such as the survey's goals, nature of the data base, and budget constraints. This article provides justification for a “siteless survey” using evidence from a project on Potowomut Neck in Rhode Island whose objective was not to locate sites but to examine the distribution and density of prehistoric remains to test an hypothesis related to land use patterns. The survey strategy, random walk, was chosen because it possessed the advantages of probabilistic testing, as well as the ease of locating sample units. The results were within the limits of statistical validity and were found unable to reject the hypothesis. “Siteless survey” may be successfully applied in similar contexts where the distribution and density of materials, as opposed to ambiguously defined sites, are sought as evidence of land use patterns, in particular, and human adaptation, in general.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Adena R Rissman ◽  
Molly C Daniels ◽  
Peter Tait ◽  
Xiaojing Xing ◽  
Ann L Brower

Summary Neoliberal land reforms to increase economic development have important implications for biodiversity conservation. This paper investigates land reform in New Zealand’s South Island that divides leased state-owned stations (ranches) with private grazing leases into state-owned conservation land, private land owned by the former leaseholder and private land under protective covenant (similar to conservation easement). Conserved lands had less threatened vegetation, lower productivity, less proximity to towns and steeper slopes than privatized lands. Covenants on private land were more common in intermediate zones with moderate land-use productivity and slope. Lands identified with ecological or recreational ‘significant inherent values’ were more likely to shift into conserved or covenant status. Yet among lands with identified ecological values, higher-threat areas were more likely to be privatized than lower-threat areas. This paper makes two novel contributions: (1) quantitatively examining the role of scientific recommendations about significant inherent values in land reform outcomes; and (2) examining the use of conservation covenants on privatized land. To achieve biodiversity goals, it is critical to avoid or prevent the removal of land-use restrictions beyond protected areas.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 631
Author(s):  
Kyle D. Woodward ◽  
Narcisa G. Pricope ◽  
Forrest R. Stevens ◽  
Andrea E. Gaughan ◽  
Nicholas E. Kolarik ◽  
...  

Remote sensing analyses focused on non-timber forest product (NTFP) collection and grazing are current research priorities of land systems science. However, mapping these particular land use patterns in rural heterogeneous landscapes is challenging because their potential signatures on the landscape cannot be positively identified without fine-scale land use data for validation. Using field-mapped resource areas and household survey data from participatory mapping research, we combined various Landsat-derived indices with ancillary data associated with human habitation to model the intensity of grazing and NTFP collection activities at 100-m spatial resolution. The study area is situated centrally within a transboundary southern African landscape that encompasses community-based organization (CBO) areas across three countries. We conducted four iterations of pixel-based random forest models, modifying the variable set to determine which of the covariates are most informative, using the best fit predictions to summarize and compare resource use intensity by resource type and across communities. Pixels within georeferenced, field-mapped resource areas were used as training data. All models had overall accuracies above 60% but those using proxies for human habitation were more robust, with overall accuracies above 90%. The contribution of Landsat data as utilized in our modeling framework was negligible, and further research must be conducted to extract greater value from Landsat or other optical remote sensing platforms to map these land use patterns at moderate resolution. We conclude that similar population proxy covariates should be included in future studies attempting to characterize communal resource use when traditional spectral signatures do not adequately capture resource use intensity alone. This study provides insights into modeling resource use activity when leveraging both remotely sensed data and proxies for human habitation in heterogeneous, spectrally mixed rural land areas.


2013 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Sarzynski ◽  
George Galster ◽  
Lisa Stack

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