Annual Report 1 to the David and Lucile Packard Foundation

Integrating Dynamics of Human Resource Use and Their Effects on Rainforests in Madagascar: Linking Landscape Ecology, Cultural Anthropology, Behavioral Ecology, and Applied Mathematics for a Science-Based Strategy against Deforestation in Madagascar.

Summary of Year 1 (July 2002- June 2003) Activities:

The first year saw considerable progress in the establishment of a conceptual model for the drivers of land-use change in the Ranomafana area. Particularly important were extensive discussions among project personnel, local guides, ANGAP foresters, and anthropologists during the December 2002 workshop (see below). Following the priorities set during this workshop and others, we established protocols for both the socioeconomic field research program (SFRP) and the biodiversity field research program (BFRP), set schedules for fieldwork, and began collection of field data. Additional logistical concerns were also addressed (equipment purchases, establishment of research infrastructure in Madagascar, and selecting, hiring, and training personnel).

The principal goals of the Socioeconomic Field Research Program (SFRP) are to: (1) model individual economic choices that affect land use patterns in a sample of villages surrounding Ranomafana National Park; (2) identify and quantify the interaction between population density, growth and economic choices regarding crop cultivation and forest-resource use; (3) predict future land use patterns with a primary focus on tavy cultivation and forest-resource extraction. To these ends, the completion of the first year of the project finds significant critical advances in the design and coordination phases of the SFRP, and puts the program on target to initiate field data collection beginning on July 1, 2003.

The objective of the Biodiversity Field Research Program (BFRP) is to measure shifts in biodiversity (animal and plant communities) linked to human activities and changes in forest cover. The general protocol is to survey along a disturbance gradient from forest edge to intact interior. Surveys will ultimately be conducted in habitats associated with all SFRP villages. Fieldwork on biodiversity during the first year included exploratory surveys within Ranomafana National Park. The objectives of these surveys were to: (1) provide preliminary data from interior forest sites in a diversity of microhabitats and disturbance regimes; (2) refine project field techniques for primate and botanical inventories; and (3) provide training for core personnel.

Workshop at the Centre ValBio, Ranomafana, Madagascar, 3-6 December 2002

This meeting brought together the investigators and relevant experts to discuss the objectives, scope, and initial design of the project. Participants included the principal investigators, experts in biodiversity and socio-ecology, technicians and coordinators, other researchers active in the region and/or in related disciplines, and ANGAP officials and field agents. The important results of this meeting included selecting key personnel (postdoctoral research associates, field technicians) and outlining project goals and general schedule of research activities. Also, the collaboration with ANGAP on the project was clarified and formalized.

Year 2 Objectives

Socioeconomic Field Research Program (SFRP)
The SFRP has developed a research schedule for the next two years that centers on the surveying of households in fourteen of the eighteen selected study villages; currently scheduled are two surveys rounds and an observational round. The first survey will focus on the assessment of household (1) demography, (2) wealth status, (3) land tenure, (4) cultivation practices, and (5) food security. The second survey round will focus on the assessment of household (1) social networks, (2) wood resource use practices, (3) hunting practices, (4) attitude about and association with Ranomafana National Park. Within each village every attempt will be made to exhaustively survey all households. The average size of a village is 35 households.

Biodiversity Field Research Program (BFRP)
Based on initial field research and workshops (see below), we have developed a program of research for the next two-and-a-half years of the BFRP. This includes a schedule toconduct surveys in 20 additional localities in the Ranomafana region. We will base most of our sampling on transects connecting forest edges to interior habitats, with the goal of measuring a gradient of disturbance. Variation in disturbance regimes will be linked to information gained from the SFRP. We have also refined our taxonomic groups for further study and our field methodology.

Modeling
SFRP and BFRP results will be linked with GIS as we develop our model relating human economic decisions to patterns of deforestation and their impact on biodiversity.

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