Amazon
LUCIA - Land Use, Climate and Infections in Western Amazonia
Description of the project: Land Use and Land Cover Changes (LULCC), coupled with the effects of a changing climate will have important impacts on the natural environment and the human population of the Amazon. Forest conversion in Amazonia has also an influence on the dynamics of endemic infectious diseases such as malaria, yellow fever and leishmaniasis. This project builds upon previous research projects and the expertise of the team of investigators with the general objective of understanding the relationships between population changes, LULCC, climate change and infectious disease transmission. Local societies, considered as complex social-ecological systems, have inter-linkages between social, environmental and epidemiological phenomena which will be approached by using Agents Based Modeling (ABM) to produce LULCC and vulnerability scenarios for the region. ABMs are capable of representing feedback loops and critical thresholds at very low levels of social aggregation or scales and, in the process of modeling, the actions of agents and their effects will create a series of possible scenarios. Four field sites will be investigated in Western Amazonia, a rich biodiversity hotspot: Machadinho, in Rondônia (Brazil); Madre de Dios and Loreto, in Peru, and Northern Ecuadorian Amazon. Inputs from ABMs will be used to develop an Index of Social-environmental and Health Vulnerability of the territories to the impacts of global environmental changes.
Participants: Alisson Flávio Barbieri (Coord.), Gilvan R. Guedes, William K. Pan (Duke University/USA), Carlos F. Mena (USFq/Ecuador), Jaime Miranda (UPCH/Peru), Beth Feingold (University of New York – Albany), Ulisses Confalonieri, Laura Wong.
Duration: 2012 - 2019.
Funding: InterAmerican Institute (IAI).
From the balcony of my house, the forest: the formation of the Amazon frontier from a households perspective
Description of the project: Research scholarship grant
Participants: Alisson F. Barbieri.
Duration: Since 2017.
Funding: Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq).
Demographic dynamics, land use and development in the Amazon: A reinterpretation based on seven case studies between 1975 and 2010
Description of the project: The main objective of the research is to analyze information from household surveys that help to portray the demographic, socioeconomic and land use dynamics in the Amazon.
Participants: Alisson Flávio Barbieri (Coord.), Gilvan R. Guedes, Reinaldo O. Santos, Roberto L.M. Monte-Mór, José Alberto Magno de Carvalho, Danielle Correa.
Duration: 2015 - 2018.
Funding: Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico - CNPq.
Demographic dynamics and land use in the Amazon: A longitudinal study for the Machadinho region, Rondônia
Description of the project: The recent expansion of the Amazon frontier was marked by agricultural colonization projects and major infrastructure works, such as roads and hydroelectric dams, which promoted intense migration and environmental transformation. The project is a multidisciplinary research proposal on the relationship between demographic dynamics and land use dynamics in a colonization project, in the Machadinho region, in the Brazilian state of Rondônia. Information used in this research includes data collected in household surveys, in addition to existing data. The fieldwork will be conducted in an open settlement project in late 1984 (called Machadinho), where some researchers from our team have previously participated in four household surveys. The information already collected will subsidize the construction of a new “wave” of field identification, in 2010 - the central object of this proposal. In this way, a longitudinal database will be created for a period of 26 years. The data previously collected in Machadinho have georeferenced information on socioeconomic, ecological, behavioral, demographic, and health characteristics, which makes it possible to perform a multidisciplinary analysis, from a spatial and temporal perspective. For this research, a questionnaire will be constructed and applied that will seek to verify recent changes in the frontier, particularly through the relationship between demographic dynamics and land use. This questionnaire will be made compatible with previous research carried out in Machadinho, allowing a unique analysis of 26 years of transformations in a part of the southern Amazon.
Participants: Alisson Flávio Barbieri (Coord.), Roberto Luís de Melo Monte-Mór, Ricardo M. Ruiz, Donald R. Sawyer, Dorisvalder Dias Nunes, John Sydenstricker-Neto, Betânia Maria Zarzuela Alves de Avelar.
Duration: 2010 - 2011.
Funding: Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico - CNPq.
Migration along the Transoceanic highway: Prerequisites for understanding changes in population, disease and environment
Description of the project: The purpose of this projectl is to better understand migration dynamics and household structure near the border of Peru and Brazil along the recently (and ongoing) construction of the Transoceanic (formally Trans-Amazonian) highway in order to provide baseline data to support future grant applications that focus on the interface between population, health and environment. There are two main objectives for this proposal: (1) to help initiate a collaboration of experts from the United States, Brazil and Peru who specialize in demography, economics, biostatistics, geography, epidemiology, and entomology; and (2) to design a sample that is representative of geographic areas in Peru and Brazil along the highway and to conduct in-depth household surveys to obtain baseline information regarding household composition, economics, mobility, reproductive health, health status, and land use.
Participants: William K. Pan (Coord.), Alisson F. Barbieri, Richard E. Bilsborrow
Duration: 2010 - 2012.
Funding: Johns Hopkins University (JHU).
Modeling Population-Environment Dynamics in the Ecuadorian Amazon
Description of the project:The primary objective for this project is to examine the complex causal pathways involved in multidimensional feedbacks between demographic, environmental, and human health dynamics in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon. Multilevel statistical models will be developed based upon population-environment-health theory using geo-coded longitudinal household and community data collected in 1990, 1999 and 2000, augmented by a time series of remotely sensed images from 1972 to the present.
Participants: Wiliam K. Pan (Coord.), Alisson Flávio Barbieri, David L. Carr, Richard E. Bilsborrow
Duration: 2007 - 2008.
Funding: National Institute Of Health (NIH).
The Various Amazonians: spatial heterogeneity in the Brazilian Legal Amazon
Description of the project: The general idea that guides this research is to characterize the subspaces of the Amazonian reality, which, as such, have different demands for public policy intervention to promote development. This necessarily denotes, understanding the Amazon no longer as a homogeneous space, but formed by different local territorialities, regardless of its administrative disposition between states and municipalities. These differences appear in the composition of the population: urban and rural; in the sectorial composition of Gross Domestic Products, with consequent repercussions on occupation in the labor market; the endowment of factors of production, including the endowment of natural resources, also with direct implications as to the way these resources are exploited and, in the interaction of the actors involved to exploit them; in the most dynamic economic sectors in each economy; in the way wealth is distributed, with consequences for the social fabric, such as the formation, size and characteristics of poverty and inequality in each case; and therefore on the various indicators that denote the evolution of economic growth and development. This characterization will allow you to see how the formulation of the region's development policy needs to be revised, based on how its heterogeneous parts are integrated and with different needs. An analytical effort, to understand and attack the region's problems from its parts, with spillovers to the region as a whole.
Participants: Sérgio Luís de Medeiros Rivero (Coord.), Alisson Flávio Barbieri, Ricardo M. Ruiz, Frederico Gonzaga Jayme Júnior, Marco Crocco, Eduardo Mota Albuquerque
Duration: 2007 - 2008.
Funding: Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq).
Rural Transitions and Urbanization in the Ecuadorian Amazon
Description of the project: The project aims to assess how changes in the form of rural production and reproduction in the Ecuadorian Amazon are linked to the emerging urbanization process in the region.
Participants: Alisson Flávio Barbieri (Coord.), Carlos Mena
Duration: 2004 - 2005.
Funding: Mellon Foundation.
Community survey in the Northeast Ecuadorian Amazon
Description of the project: The project includes three phases: a) elaboration of a sampling design of rural communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon, b) implementation of field research to collect socio-economic, political, instutional, demographic and infrastructure information from the defined rural communities for the sample design, c) analysis of the results, which were used in the doctoral dissertation of Alisson Barbieri and other doctors graduated or in the process of concluding the doctorate by UNC-Chapel Hill, as well as in the publication of several articles and research reports.
Participants: Alisson Flávio Barbieri (Coord.), Victoria Salinas
Duration: 2002.
Funding: Tinker Foundation.
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