Forest visitation and utilization along agricultural intensification gradients

Forests support crucial ecosystem services globally, and contribute to the livelihoods of millions of people, but are threatened by agricultural expansion and intensification. Yet the relationship between forest cover and agricultural intensification, and how it mediates people’s access to and use of resources has been seldom studied globally. Using remote sensing imagery and household surveys, we analyzed the effects of forest cover change on forest access (visitation) and household use of resources along a gradient from lower to higher land use intensification across seven tropical landscapes in low and middle income countries. We find that increased agricultural intensification lowered forest visitation in the high intensification zone compared to the low to medium intensification zones. Forest types and changes, such as stable forests, forest gains and edge density, positively impacted household use of forest-sourced food and construction materials and visitation, highlighting the importance of sustainable forest management. Our results complement the evidence of forest cover change by looking at agricultural intensification zones, which reveal the site-specific trends of forest types, ownership and household demand for ecosystem services. We recommend integrated landscape approaches with context and site-specific solutions to address the variability of forest types and multiple management goals that can be achieved with agricultural production and equitable access to provisioning goods and services in complex multi-functional landscapes.

• Publication year

  2026

• Venue

  Frontiers in Forests and Global Change

• Publication date

  2026-02-19

• Fields of study

  Not labeled

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.3389/ffgc.2025.1646882
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Land use intensification causes the spatial contraction of woody-plant based ecosystem services in southwestern Ethiopia

  2024cited by this paper
• A social-ecological approach to characterize ecosystem services in the Ecuadorian Amazon

  2024cited by this paper
• Do provisioning ecosystem services change along gradients of increasing agricultural production?

  2024cited by this paper
• Joint environmental and social benefits from diversified agriculture

  2024cited by this paper
• Participatory mapping of ecosystem services across a gradient of agricultural intensification in West Kalimantan, Indonesia

  2023cited by this paper
• Agricultural intensification, Indigenous stewardship and land sparing in tropical dry forests

  2023cited by this paper
• Land Use Preference for Ecosystem Services and Well-Being in Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh

  2022cited by this paper
• Disentangling the numbers behind agriculture-driven tropical deforestation

  2022cited by this paper
• Remote sensing of aboveground grass biomass between protected and non‐protected areas in savannah rangelands

  2021cited by this paper
• Effect of land tenure on forest cover and the paradox of private titling in Panama

  2021cited by this paper
• Sparing or sharing land? Views from agricultural scientists

  2021cited by this paper
• Trade-Offs and Synergies Between Food and Fodder Production and Other Ecosystem Services in an Actively Restored Forest, Natural Forest and an Agroforestry System in Ghana

  2021cited by this paper
• Nature-dependent people: Mapping human direct use of nature for basic needs across the tropics

  2021cited by this paper
• The Number and Spatial Distribution of Forest-Proximate People Globally

  2020cited by this paper
• A High-Resolution Cropland Map for the West African Sahel Based on High-Density Training Data, Google Earth Engine, and Locally Optimized Machine Learning

  2020cited by this paper
• Mapping Three Decades of Changes in the Brazilian Savanna Native Vegetation Using Landsat Data Processed in the Google Earth Engine Platform

  2020cited by this paper
• Inter-Seasonal Time Series Imagery Enhances Classification Accuracy of Grazing Resource and Land Degradation Maps in a Savanna Ecosystem

  2020cited by this paper
• Forest-linked livelihoods in a globalized world

  2020cited by this paper
• Forest age mapping based on multiple-resource remote sensing data

  2020cited by this paper
• Valuing the Ecosystem Services Provided by Forests In Pursat Basin, Cambodia

  2020cited by this paper
• Assessing land use changes and livelihood outcomes of rural people in the Chittagong Hill Tracts region, Bangladesh

  2020cited by this paper
• Global impacts of future cropland expansion and intensification on agricultural markets and biodiversity

  2019cited by this paper
• Agriculturally productive yet biodiverse: human benefits and conservation values along a forest-agriculture gradient in Southern Ethiopia

  2019cited by this paper
• Are Mayan community forest reserves effective in fulfilling people's needs and preserving tree species?

  2019cited by this paper
• Land‐sharing/‐sparing connectivity landscapes for ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation

  2019cited by this paper
• Use and perceived importance of forest ecosystem services in rural livelihoods of Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh

  2019cited by this paper
• MODIS NDVI trends and fractional land cover change for improved assessments of vegetation degradation in Burkina Faso, West Africa

  2018cited by this paper
• Social-ecological outcomes of agricultural intensification

  2018cited by this paper
• Is habitat fragmentation good for biodiversity?

  2018cited by this paper
• Classifying drivers of global forest loss

  2018cited by this paper
• Retaining forests within agricultural landscapes as a pathway to sustainable intensification: Evidence from Southern Ethiopia

  2018cited by this paper
• Creation of forest edges has a global impact on forest vertebrates

  2017cited by this paper
• High resolution analysis of tropical forest fragmentation and its impact on the global carbon cycle

  2017cited by this paper
• Empirical evidence of the public health benefits of tropical forest conservation in Cambodia: a generalised linear mixed-effects model analysis.

  2017cited by this paper
• Indirect contributions of forests to dietary diversity in Southern Ethiopia

  2017cited by this paper
• A methodological approach for assessing cross-site landscape change: Understanding socio-ecological systems

  2017cited by this paper
• Have integrated landscape approaches reconciled societal and environmental issues in the tropics

  2017cited by this paper
• Estimating forest carbon stocks in tropical dry forests of Zimbabwe: exploring the performance of high and medium spatial-resolution multispectral sensors

  2017cited by this paper
• Forest contributions to livelihoods in changing agriculture-forest landscapes☆

  2017cited by this paper
• Upstream watershed condition predicts rural children’s health across 35 developing countries

  2017cited by this paper
• The extent of edge effects in fragmented landscapes: Insights from satellite measurements of tree cover

  2016cited by this paper
• Identifying characteristics of households affected by deforestation in their fuelwood and non-timber forest product collections: Case study in Kampong Thom Province, Cambodia

  2016cited by this paper
• Forest foods and healthy diets: quantifying the contributions

  2016cited by this paper
• Understanding people and forest interrelations along an intensification gradient in Arsi-Negele, Ethiopia

  2016cited by this paper
• Agrarian changes in the Nyimba District of Zambia

  2016cited by this paper
• Drivers and outcomes of changing land use in parkland agroforestry systems of central Burkina Faso

  2016cited by this paper
• Historical drivers of landscape and dietary change in an agricultural frontier: Bosawas Biosphere Reserve, Siuna, Nicaragua

  2016cited by this paper
• Land-use change and its influence on rural livelihoods, food security and biodiversity conservation in the Southwest Region of Cameroon

  2016cited by this paper
• Drivers and effects of agrarian change in Kapuas Hulu Regency, West Kalimantan, Indonesia

  2016cited by this paper
• Introduction: Agrarian change in tropical landscapes

  2016cited by this paper
• Increasing human dominance of tropical forests

  2015cited by this paper
• Loss of secondary‐forest resilience by land‐use intensification in the Amazon

  2015cited by this paper
• Forest-Based Livelihoods Strategies Conditioned by Market Remoteness and Forest Proximity in Jharkhand, India

  2015cited by this paper
• Habitat fragmentation and biodiversity conservation: key findings and future challenges

  2015cited by this paper
• Reframing landscape fragmentation's effects on ecosystem services.

  2015cited by this paper
• When are Forest Visits Valued the Most? An Analysis of the Seasonal Demand for Forest Recreation in Poland

  2012cited by this paper
• An assessment of deforestation and forest degradation drivers in developing countries

  2012cited by this paper
• Forest and agrarian change in the Chittagong Hill Tracts region of Bangladesh

  2010cited by this paper
• Tropical forests were the primary sources of new agricultural land in the 1980s and 1990s

  2010cited by this paper
• Why Forests Are Important for Global Poverty Alleviation: a Spatial Explanation

  2008cited by this paper
• Livelihoods, forests, and conservation in developing countries: an overview

  2005cited by this paper

• No citing papers are available for this paper.