From USSR to EU: 20 years of rural landscape changes in Vidzeme, Latvia
Landscape changes have been observed throughout rural Europe over the past decades in relation to intensifying agriculture and land marginalisation. This is particularly true for Central and Eastern Europe as drastic political and socio-economic changes have taken place over the past century, as is the case for Latvia. Using a detailed time series of high-resolution remotely sensed images spanning from 1988 to 2007, the landscape structure (composition and configuration) in Vidzeme, central Latvia, is examined and compared between periods. Major recent events for the country, such as independence and entry into the European Union are covered. The effect on landscape structure of various soc…
High-resolution mapping of the trade in tropical commodities: a tool to estimate impacts of corporate zero deforestation commitments
Conservation threats in tropical landscapes are increasingly related to telecouplings, i.e. linkages between distant places such as those embodied in trade flows. Developing solutions to address these threats require novel approaches for measuring and understanding these telecouplings. In this presentation, I outline methods and results from the Trase initiative (http://trase.earth/), a flagship effort to map international supply chains of deforestation-risk tropical commodities. I explain the diversity of datasets required to piece together international trade flows, link actors (e.g. individual companies) to the places where they operate, and estimate the impacts of that trade, including …