Pathways framework identifies wildfire impacts on agriculture.

Wildfires are a growing concern to society and the environment in many parts of the world. Within the United States, the land area burned by wildfires has steadily increased over the past 40 years. Agricultural land management is widely understood as a force that alters fire regimes, but less is known about how wildfires, in turn, impact the agriculture sector.

Biases and limitations of Global Forest Change and author-generated land cover maps in detecting deforestation in the Amazon.

Studying land use change in protected areas (PAs) located in tropical forests is a major conservation priority due to high conservation value (e.g., species richness and carbon storage) here, coupled with generally high deforestation rates.

Integration of qualitative and quantitative methods for land-use-change modeling in a deforestation frontier.

Development and implementation of effective protected area management to reduce deforestation depend in part on identifying factors contributing to forest loss and areas at risk of conversion, but standard land-use-change modeling may not fully capture contextual factors that are not easily quantified. To better understand deforestation and agricultural expansion in Amazonian protected areas, we combined quantitative land-use-change modeling with qualitative discourse analysis in a case study of Brazil's Jamanxim National Forest. We modeled land-use change from 2008 to 2018 and projected deforestation through 2028.

Projected losses of ecosystem services in the US disproportionately affect non-white and lower-income populations.

Addressing how ecosystem services (ES) are distributed among groups of people is critical for making conservation and environmental policy-making more equitable. Here, we evaluate the distribution and equity of changes in ES benefits across demographic and socioeconomic groups in the United States (US) between 2020 and 2100. Specifically, we use land cover and population projections to model potential shifts in the supply, demand, and benefits of the following ES: provision of clean air, protection against a vector-borne disease (West Nile virus), and crop pollination.

Approaches to interdisciplinary mixed methods research in land-change science and environmental management.

Combining qualitative and quantitative methods and data is crucial to understanding the complex dynamics and often interdisciplinary nature of conservation. Many conservation scientists use mixed methods, but there are a variety of mixed methods approaches, a lack of shared vocabulary, and few methodological frameworks. We reviewed articles from 2 conservation-related fields that often incorporate qualitative and quantitative methods: land-change science (n = 16) and environmental management (n = 16).