Abstract
This chapter presents a framework that departs from standard approaches to provide explanations for reforestation. It draws on hierarchy theory, notions of “adaptive cycles” and “panarchy”, and the concept of “heterarchy” as heuristics for understanding multi-scale causation behind secondary growth. Hierarchy theory reconciles theoretical perspectives by noting the distinct scales on which their explanations operate, and allows identification of causal pathways to narrate indirect and direct causes of forest recovery. Adaptive cycles provide a means of accounting for both fast and slow operations in the agents behind land cover change, and panarchy reveals asynchronies in slow-fast operations that result in short-, medium- and long-term forest cover dynamics. Heterarchy refers to hierarchical and non-hierarchical causation, including reorganization of the causal chains influencing land cover, such that certain explanations may become important at some moments and not others. This framework can explain why different mechanisms can best account for secondary growth in different contexts, and provides a basis for, comparisons across cases, and recognition of changes in causation over time.
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Abbott A (2004) Methods of discovery: heuristics for the social sciences. W.W. Norton, New York
Ahn V, Allen TFH (1996) Hierarchy theory: a vision, vocabulary and epistemology. Columbia University Press, New York
Allen TFH, Starr TB (1988) Hierarchy: perspectives for ecological complexity. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL
Almeyda A (2004) Land use and land cover in Inapari, Peru and Assis Brasil, Brazil, Southwest Amazonia. MA Thesis, University of Florida, FL
Amin A (2004) Regulating economic globalization. Trans Inst Br Geogr 29:217–233
Beekman CS, Baden WW (2005) Nonlinear models for archaeology and anthropology. Ashgate, Aldershot, UK
Bell MM (2005) The vitality of difference: systems theory, the environment, and the ghost of parsons. Soc Nat Res 18(5):481–478
Berkes F and Folke C (2002) Back to the future: ecosystem dynamics and local knowledge. In: Gunderson LH, Holling CS (eds) Panarchy: understanding transformations in human and natural systems. Island Press, Washington, DC, pp 121–146
Birkinshaw JM and Morrison AJ (1995) Configurations of strategy and structure in subsidiaries of multinational corporations. J Int Bus Stud 26(4): 729–754
Crumley CL (ed) (1994) Historical ecology: cultural knowledge and changing landscapes. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, NM
Ehrenreich RM, Crumley CL, Levy JE (eds) (1995) Heterarchy and the analysis of complex societies. American Anthropological Association, Arlington, VA
Gallopín G (2002) Planning for resilience: scenarios, surprises and branch points. In: Gunderson LH, Holling CS (eds) Panarchy: understanding transformations in human and natural systems. Island Press, Washington, DC, pp 361–392.
Geist HJ, Lambin EF (2002) Proximate causes and underlying forces of tropical deforestation. BioScience 52(2):143–150
Gibson C, Ostrom E, Ahn T-K (2000) The concept of scale and the human dimensions of global change: a survey. Ecol Econ 32:217–239
Gunderson LH, Holling CS (eds) (2002) Panarchy: understanding transformations in human and natural systems. Island Press, Washington, DC
Gunderson LH, Holling CS, Light SS (1995) Barriers and bridges to the renewal of ecosystems and institutions. Columbia University Press, New York
Gutman G, Janetos AC, Justice CO, Moran EF, Mustard JF, Rindfuss RR, Skole D, Turner BL II, Cochrane MA (eds) (2004) Land change science: observing, monitoring, and understanding trajectories of change on the earth’s surface. Kluwer, Dordrecht
Holling CS (2004) From complex regions to complex worlds. Ecol Soc 9(1): 11. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss1/art11
Holling CS, Gunderson LH, Peterson GD (2002) Sustainability and panarchies. In: Gunderson LH, Holling CS (eds) Panarchy: understanding transformations in human and natural systems. Island Press, Washington, DC, pp 63–102.
Lambin EF, Geist H (eds) (2006) Land-use and land-cover change: local processes and global impacts. Springer, Berlin
Lucas RM, Honzak M, Foody GM, Curran PJ, Corves C (1993) Characterizing tropical secondary forests using multi-temporal Landsat sensor imagery. Int J Remote Sens 14(16):3061–3067
Mather AS, Needle CL (1998) The forest transition: a theoretical basis. Area 30(2):117–124
McMichael P (1990) Incorporating comparison within a world-historical perspective: an alternative comparative method. Am Sociol Rev 55(3):385–397
McMichael P (1992) Rethinking comparative analysis in a post-developmentalist context. Int Soc Sci J 44:351–365
Mendoza ESG, Perz MS, Nepstad D (2007) Participatory stakeholder workshops to mitigate impacts of road paving in the southwestern Amazon. Conserv Soc 5(3):382–407
Moran EF, Ostrom E (eds) (2005) Seeing the forest and the trees: human–environmental interactions in forest ecosystems. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
O’Neill RV, DeAngelis DL, Waide JB, Allen TFH (1986) A hierarchical concept of ecosystems. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ
O’Reilly DJW (2003) Further evidence of heterarchy in Bronze Age Thailand. Curr Anthropol 44(2):300–306
Overmars KP, Verberg PH (2006) Multilevel modeling of land use from field to village level in the Philippines. Agric Syst 89:435–456
Pan WKY, Bilsborrow R (2005) The use of a multilevel model to analyze factors influencing land use: a study of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Global Planet Change 47(2–4):232–252
Parker DC, Manson SM, Janssen MA, Hoffmann MJ, Deadman P (2003) Multi-agent systems for the simulation of land-use and land-cover change: a review. Ann Assoc Am Geogr 93(2):314–337
Perz SG (2002) The changing social contexts of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Soc Sci Q 83(1):35–53
Perz SG (2007) Grand theory and context-specificity in the study of forest dynamics: forest transition theory and other directions. Prof Geogr 59(1):105–114
Perz SG (2008) forest transitions, environmental social theory, and land science research: reply to Walker. Prof Geogr 60(1):141–145
Perz SG, Walker RT (2002) Household life cycles and secondary forest cover among small farm colonists in the Amazon. World Dev 30(6):1009–1027
Perz SG, Skole DL (2003) Secondary forest expansion in the Brazilian Amazon and the refinement of forest transition theory. Soc Nat Res 16:277–294
Perz SG, Walker RT, Caldas MM (2006) Beyond population and environment: household demographic life cycles and land use allocation among small farms in the Amazon. Hum Ecol 34(6):829–849
Perz SG, Caldas M, Arima E, Walker RT (2007) Socio-spatial processes of unofficial road-building in the Amazon: socioeconomic and biophysical explanations. Dev Change 38(3):529–551
Rautman A (1998) Hierarchy and heterarchy in the American Southwest: a comment on McGuire and Saitta. Am Antiquity 63(2):325–333
Rudel TK (2005) Tropical forests: regional paths of destruction and regeneration in the late twentieth century. Columbia University Press, New York
Scarborough VL, Valdez F Jr, Dunning N (2003) Heterarchy, political economy, and the ancient Maya. University of Arizona Press, Tucson, AZ
Schmink M, Wood CH (1992) Contested frontiers in Amazonia. Columbia University Press, New York
Serrão EAS, Homma AKO (1993) Brazil. In: Sustainable agriculture and the environment in the humid tropics. National Research Council. National Academy Press, Washington, DC, pp 265–351.
Skole DL, Cochrane MA, Matricardi ET, Chomentowski W, Pedlowski M, Kimble D (2004) Pattern to Process in the Amazon Region. In: Gutman G, Janetos AC, Justice CO, Moran EF, Mustard JF, Rindfuss RR, Skole D, Turner BL II, Cochrane MA (eds) Land change science: observing, monitoring, and understanding trajectories of change on the earth’s surface. Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp 77–95.
Souza C (1997) Constitutional engineering in Brazil: the politics of federalism and decentralization. St. Martin’s Press, New York
Stark D (2001) Ambiguous assets for uncertain environments: heterarchy and postsocialist firms. In: DiMaggio P (ed) The twenty-first-century firm: changing economic organization in international perspective. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, pp 69–104
Steininger MK (1996) Tropical secondary forest regrowth in the Amazon: age, area and change estimation with thematic mapper data. Int J Remote Sens 17:9–27
Tilly C (1984) Big structures, large processes, huge comparisons. Sage Foundation, New York
Toni F, Kaimowitz D (eds) (2003) Municípios e Gestão Florestal na Amazônia. A.S. Editores, Natal, Brazil
Vance C, Iovanna R (2006) Analyzing spatial hierarchies in remotely sensed data: insights from a multi-level model of tropical deforestation. Land Use Policy 23:26–236
Vayda A (1985) Progressive contextualization: methods for research in human ecology. Hum Ecol 11:265–281
Vayda AP, Walters BB (1999) Against political ecology. Hum Ecol 27(1):167–179
Walker RT (1993) Deforestation and economic development. Can J Reg Sci 16:481–497
Walker RT (2007) Forest transition: without complexity, without scale. Prof Geogr 60(1):136–140
Warren WA (2005) Hierarchy theory in sociology, ecology, and resource management: a conceptual model for natural resource or environmental sociology and socioecological systems. Soci Nat Resour 18(5):447–466
Westley F (2002) The devil in the dynamics: adaptive management on the front lines. In: Gunderson LH, Holling CS (eds) Panarchy: understanding transformations in human and natural systems. Island Press, Washington, DC, pp 333–360
Wood CH, Porro R (eds) (2002) Deforestation and land use in the Amazon. University of Florida Press, Gainesville, FL
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Perz, S.G., Almeyda, A.M. (2009). A Tri-Partite Framework of Forest Dynamics: Hierarchy, Panarchy, and Heterarchy in the Study of Secondary Growth. In: Nagendra, H., Southworth, J. (eds) Reforesting Landscapes. Landscape Series, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9656-3_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9656-3_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-9655-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-9656-3
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)