GIS +Planetary Health - UC GIS Week 2022

GIS +Planetary Health (Wednesday 1-2pm)
Slack Channel #t_gis_planetary_health

Marieke Fenton - To Zero or Not to Zero (Deforestation)? Reactions to a Deforestation Ban by Farming Systems in Paraguay - 1 pm

In December 2004 Paraguay passed the Zero Deforestation Law after years of high deforestation rates. This law banned deforestation in the Eastern region of the country. However, the law did not bring deforestation to zero, as the name suggests. High levels of forest loss continued. If deforestation continued, what did change? Forest loss in this region is driven by agriculture. Small subsistence-oriented farmers and large-scale commercial farmers coexist in Eastern Paraguay. In this work I bring together global spatial datasets on forest cover and land characteristics to look at how these different farming systems reacted to the Zero Deforestation Law. I use a variety of sources, including the widely used layers on forest cover loss from the Global Forest Watch dataset and from the Tropical Moist Forests dataset. I also generate my own spatial data layers from these and other spatial datasets. I use the resulting dataset, compiled from these diverse spatial data sources, in regression analysis. Preliminary evidence shows that the Zero Deforestation Law’s ban on deforestation in Eastern Paraguay had a larger impact on larger scale farms, who slowed deforestation more than their smaller counterparts after the ban came into effect.

Luke Salvato (soil/crops)- Soil Suitability to Crop Rotation in California's Rice Country 1:20pm

Rice is an important global cereal crop for human nutrition and agricultural livelihoods. Most rice cropping systems are continuous rice, supporting one, two, or even three rice crops per year. While these systems can be highly productive, they face sustainability challenges including water use, greenhouse gas emissions, and increasing weed pressure. California’s Sacramento Valley is home to one of the most productive rice growing regions in the US, and most of the region has been in continuous rice for multiple decades due to consistent high yields and high market prices. This region also has unique soil attributes including high clay content, high salinity, and cemented subsurface layers and there is a long-standing assumption among farmers, extension agents, and policy makers that these soil features are not suitable for production of crops other than rice. We use satellite derived land cover data, soil maps, and a random forest model to test this assumption across the entire region. Our analysis shows that only a small portion of the current rice area is under some form of rotation (6%). Soil pH, salinity, and water infiltration were the most important soil features in predicting a rice field’s suitability for rotation. Finally, we estimate that only 15-20% of the total area could accommodate rotations based on soil properties. This work highlights the difficulty of diversifying modern high yielding cropping systems. There are many barriers to adopting sustainable agricultural practices including market prices, access to markets, and access to equipment. Soil biophysical properties should be considered in ongoing efforts to overcome these barriers.

Ricky Satomi + Practical GIS in Forestry - 1:40 pm

Forest and natural resource managers in California are under increasing pressure to manage larger landscape areas with a declining workforce. Furthermore, modern resource management has evolved to include extremely complex suites of objectives, necessitating managers to become proficient in a wide variety of disciplines. GIS is the key intersection of these needs, being a tool that crosses multiple boundaries and combines many types of data to drive the planning, analysis, and implementation of resource management.

Traditionally, geospatial analysis in management planning has been siloed to a select few who are responsible for the analysis needs of an entire organization. Beginning in 2018, UC Cooperative Extension began offering GIS trainings to forest practitioners with an emphasis on dissolving barriers of entry for technology-averse managers, while introducing post-graduate natural resource professionals to newer, more efficient cartographic and modeling tools. Participation from state regulators, natural resource agencies, and forest managers identified a need for this type of education and highlighted the various applications of GIS in forest planning and management.