Expansion of rubber and its implications for water and carbon dynamics in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia
Investigator(s)
Principal investigator:
Jefferson Fox, East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
E-mail: FoxJ(at)EastWestCenter.org
Abstract
Montane mainland Southeast Asia (MMSEA) is a large, ecologically vital region comprising approximately half the land area of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, and China's Yunnan Province. It is a region of great biological and cultural diversity that has come under close scrutiny in the last several decades as a result of both real and perceived deforestation, land degradation, and most recently, the conversion from traditional agriculture, including shifting cultivation, to more permanent cash crops driven by regional and global markets. Rubber (Hevea brasiliensis) is the major commercial crop replacing traditional agriculture and secondary forests in the region, a direct result of strong market demands from China, the world's largest consumer. The overarching science questions to be addressed by this project are: How does the conversion from existing land covers to rubber affect local energy, water, and carbon fluxes? How extensive will rubber become in MMSEA?, and What are the consequences of those changes for regional hydrology and carbon sequestration?
URL
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