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Forest Transitions in Mosaic Landscapes:Smallholder's Flexibility in Land-Resource Use Decisions and LivelihoodStrategies From World War II to thePresent in the Amazon EstuaryNathan D. Vogta, Miguel Pinedo-Vasquezb, Eduardo S. Brondízioc,Oriana Almeidad & Sergio Riverod

a National Institute of Spatial Research, São Jose dos Campos, Brazilb Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and EarthInstitute Center for Environmental Sustainability (EICES), ColumbiaUniversity, New York, New York, USAc Department of Anthropology, Indiana University, Bloomington,Indiana, USAd Núcleo de Altos Estudos Amazônicos (NAEA), Federal University ofPará, Belém, BrazilPublished online: 15 May 2015.

To cite this article: Nathan D. Vogt, Miguel Pinedo-Vasquez, Eduardo S. Brondízio, Oriana Almeida& Sergio Rivero (2015): Forest Transitions in Mosaic Landscapes: Smallholder's Flexibility in Land-Resource Use Decisions and Livelihood Strategies From World War II to the Present in the AmazonEstuary, Society & Natural Resources: An International Journal

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2015.1014603

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Forest Transitions in Mosaic Landscapes:Smallholder’s Flexibility in Land-Resource Use

Decisions and Livelihood Strategies FromWorld War II to the Present in the Amazon Estuary

NATHAN D. VOGT

National Institute of Spatial Research, Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil

MIGUEL PINEDO-VASQUEZ

Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and Earth InstituteCenter for Environmental Sustainability (EICES), Columbia University,New York, New York, USA

EDUARDO S. BRONDIZIO

Department of Anthropology, Indiana University, Bloomington,Indiana, USA

ORIANA ALMEIDA AND SERGIO RIVERO

Nucleo de Altos Estudos Amazonicos (NAEA), Federal University ofPara, Belem, Brazil

The question of how smallholders of the Amazon estuary, locally known as cabolcos,have adapted their land use systems to produce resources during booms and busts isanalyzed in this article. We draw upon more than 50 years of census data and morethan 30 years of remotely sensed land-cover data to reconstruct these dynamics fromWorld War II to the present. We found that smallholders are highly flexible in theirland use decisions and livelihood strategies and that such flexibility has helped themto adapt their land-use systems to produce resources in demand during market boomsand conserve forests. Smallholder mosaic landscapes contain forest fragments thatenhance socioecological resilience to floods and other events produced by changesin the local hydro-climatic regimes due to sea-level rise and other climate-relatedchanges. We argue that flexibility is a tool to reduce livelihood vulnerability by facil-itating adaptation to global market and climate driven changes over the long term.

Keywords adaptation, Amazon estuary, forest transitions, land use change,resilience, social–ecological systems, sustainability

Received 17 March 2014; accepted 19 August 2014.Address correspondence to Nathan D. Vogt, National Institute of Spatial Research,

Av. dos Astronautas, 1, 758 Jd. Granja, 12227-010, Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil. E-mail:ndvogt@gmail.com

Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/usnr.

Society and Natural Resources, 0:1–16Copyright # 2015 Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0894-1920 print=1521-0723 onlineDOI: 10.1080/08941920.2015.1014603

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Over the last decade the rate of deforestation in the legal Amazon of Brazil hasbegun to decline, despite continued demand for land from industrial agriculture,ranching, and logging (INPE 2011). One of the reasons suggested by experts for thisdecline is that there are some regions, including the extensive estuary and delta,entering a forest transition that is leading to a process of forest resurgence (Rudelet al. 2005; Hecht 2010; Brondizio and Moran 2012). A forest transition in theAmazon estuary is particularly informative, as it has been occupied and modifiedsince the precolonial era (Smith 2002; Raffles and WinklerPrins 2003) and continu-ously exposed to shocks from unpredictable market and environmental changes(Hiraoka 1995). The questions of why smallholders (locally known as caboclosand=or ribeirinhos) in the Amazon estuary have not converted all of their forestedlands into plantations or pasture through the otherwise destructive postwar era(Cleary 2001; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005; Hibbard et al. 2007) hasrarely been analyzed.

Forest transitions (FT) are often presented as the reversal between two distinctland-use transitions, one from high to low cover followed by a second transition fromlow to high forest cover (Grainger 1995; Mather and Needle 1998; Barbier, Burgess,and Grainger 2010). Lambin and Meyfroidt (2010) identified five FT pathways char-acterized in the literature since the 1990s as associated with forest scarcity, state forestpolicy, economic development, globalization, and the smallholder, tree-based land-useintensification (STLUI) pathway. Studies of the first four process of FT used a struc-tural approach applied at the national or regional levels and investigated the process inEurope and North America (Mather 1992; Foster, Motzkin, and Slater 1998). In the2000s, the literature on FT in tropical countries continued to expand (Klooster 2003;Perz and Skole 2003; Mather 2007; Nagendra 2007), including subregional analysis invariation of FT pathways across the Amazon (Perz 2007; Baptista 2008). The first fourFT pathways have been well examined empirically.

The fifth, STLUI affecting FT pathways, is less well characterized in tropicalsystems as it requires understanding of long-term social and biophysical processesinfluencing smallholders (as agents) in expanding and intensifying tree-based landuses (e.g., agroforestry, home gardens, orchards, forest enrichment) on private andcommunity landscapes (Lambin and Meyfroidt 2010). Understanding STLUIrequires examination not only of how agents affect a change in land cover, but alsohow they modify land function or environmental services through the FT (Verburget al. 2009). In the Amazon estuary, for example, these changes include a range ofspecies of consumption and commercial value, carbon sequestration, accumulationof sediments, reduction of erosion, and provision of fruit and of habitat to shrimpand fish populations, among others.

Studies of the STLUI and related FT pathways often incorporate the concept ofresilience (i.e., adaptive capacity) highlighting the nonlinearity of change in land useas smallholders adapt to unpredictable changes in external social and biophysicalconditions. They often bring together approaches of livelihoods analysis from thedevelopment literature (Warner 2000; Scoones 2009) and social–ecological systems(SESs) thinking often applied in sustainability science (Folke et al. 2002; Folke2006; Gunderson and Holling 2002). Both approaches are concerned with the sus-tainability of tropical land-use systems to sustain and improve local livelihoods amidunpredictable external shocks and opportunities (Berkes et al. 1998; Scoones 2009)and emphasize analysis of cross-scale interactions of social and ecological variablesat greater temporal depth to evaluate the resilience (i.e., adaptive capacity) of those

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systems (Berkes, Colding, and Folke 2003). A criterion both use to evaluate adaptivecapacity of the SESs is the ability to quickly and easily (i.e., with flexibility) adapt toexternal changes (Denevan 1983; Pinedo-Vasquez et al. 2002) without losing struc-tural or functional characteristics of the SES.

Salient external shocks and opportunities that smallholders in the Amazon estu-ary encounter include increase in boom-and-busts of regional and global marketssince World War II, shifts in land tenure security, and an increase in extreme floodevents in the last decade. Brondızio (2008) analyzed the expansion of agroforestrysystems by smallholders in the Amazon estuary during the more recent market boomfor acai palm fruit. Other experts investigating land and resource use systems prac-ticed by estuarine smallholders during this boom characterized them as complex,diverse, and dynamic, producing multiple subsistence and market resources simul-taneously (Pinedo-Vasquez et al. 2001; Zarin 2001).

To better understand the observed variability between context-specific andaggregate rates of deforestation, experts have called for longer temporal perspectives(Dearing et al. 2010) and more comparative case studies at local levels across aregion (Perz 2007; Hecht 2010; Meyfroidt and Lambin 2011; Rudel 2012). Herein,we present results of a comparative case study of the FT in the Amazon estuary sinceWorld War II to analyze how smallholders responded to multiple social and environ-mental shocks and opportunities (though we focus on market booms and busts here)across generations. We analyze and discuss more than 50 years of archival data onthe kind and quantities of products that were traded in the Para state. We recon-structed the dynamic of land cover changes over the last 30 years using remotelysensed data. Market and land-cover data are validated using historical and ethno-graphic information that was collected by interviewing selected elders. We use thesedata sets to analyze and discuss two main questions: (1) How have estuarine small-holders adapted their land and resource use systems to the increase in external chal-lenges and opportunities produced in the postwar era? (2) Why have smallholdersnot removed forests from the landscape as observed throughout in the humid tropicsand elsewhere (Rudel 2012; van Vliet et al. 2012; Adams et al. 2013)?

Study Area and Background

The Amazon estuary as taken in this study is approximately 170,000 km2 in extent,as delimited by the limits of the 21 municipalities existing in 1950, an area five timesbigger than Costa Rica and larger than the state of Rio de Janeiro with an estimatedpopulation of more than 3.2 million (2.5 million in urban and 0.7 million rural)(Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatistica [IBGE] 2010). It includes diverse typesof upland forests (locally known as matas da terra firme) on primarily oxisol soiltypes, floodplain forests (matas da varzea), swamps, and grassland savannas (camposcerrados) on primarily humic gley soil types, some of which are seasonally flooded.The extensive floodplain of the estuary contains a dense network of interconnectedstreams (igarapes) (Pinedo-Vasquez et al. 2011).

To capture long-term variability in the FT over this large region, two study land-scapes were established, both of which have been studied by coauthors since the1980s. One site is within the municipality of Mazagao, representing the northernestuary, and the other within the municipality of Ponta de Pedras representing thesouthern estuary (Figure 1). Smallholders in the North Channel municipalities areinfluenced more by markets and administration in Macapa, the state capital of

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Amapa, and by tidal flood dynamics at the mouth of the Amazon River. Averagetemperatures vary from 23 to 30�C, and annual rainfall totals 2,650 mm (mean for1961–1990, Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia [INMET]), with tidal variationsbetween 2.0 and 4.4 m (from September 2012 to May 2014, personal data). Small-holders in the South Channel municipalities are influenced more by markets andadministration in Belem, the state capital of Para, and from tidal flood dynamicsat the mouth of the Tocantins River. Average temperatures vary from 23 to 32�C,and annual rainfall totals 3,050 m, with tidal variations between 1.2 and 3.6 m (fromFebruary 2011 to April 2014).

The estuary has been continuously occupied for at least 2000 years, bearingevidence of complex indigenous cultures existing just before European colonization.Different from frontier regions such as the Transamazon, which experienced significantnonindigenous occupation only during the last 50 years, the region has been intensivelyoccupied and managed since the 16th century. Smallholders in the estuary today reflecta history of miscegenation of indigenous, African, and Portuguese populations anddifferent waves of migration from northeastern and northern Brazil (Smith 1999;Brondızio 2008). The region has a history of land concentration and absentee landownership. Still, through the colonial era residents have engaged in subsistenceproduction, forest management, and extraction, utilizing until today knowledge ofinterdynamics of the upland–floodplain–aquatic ecosystems passed down from theMarajoara for forestry, agriculture, and shrimp and fish production (Smith 1999). Thisknowledge is revealed, for instance, in today’s large-scale production and export of acaipalm fruit, which has become the region’s most important land use and export product.

Methods

A comparative, historical ecology approach to land-use change (Ostrom 2005, 2009;Brondızio 2006; Costanza, Graumlich, and Steffen 2007; Vogt 2012) is presentedhere, utilizing remote sensing information, archival data on the kind and quantityof products sold in the region since World War II, and ethnographic andland-resource use historical data collected using participant observation, land sur-veys, and interviews of selected old residents.

Figure 1. Study area.

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To analyze change in the kinds and quantities of products that were traded,population, number of rural holdings and their area, and land use of smallholderssince World War II, we collected and analyzed archival census data collected fromthe IBGE.1 As limits of municipalities of Mazagao and Ponta de Pedras have chan-ged through the study period, the limits and production data from recently createdmunicipalities are aggregated to limits of municipalities that were created before andduring 1950. To isolate and identify boom-and-bust products from the informationon several commercial and subsistence products captured in the archival data, thetop four most important products in each period of the data were identified andcompared. The percent of total households reporting types and quantity of resourceswas used to rank products.

To reconstruct land-cover changes for each study area and link to the driversand trends just described, a time series of remotely sensed images, includingblack-and-white aerial photos and Landsat images (Figure 2), was used dividingthe study period roughly into three phases: (1) World War II to the early 1970s;(2) the early 1970s to mid 1980s; and (3) the late 1980s to 2006. For land cover inthe 1970s we used aerial photographs collected by the Brazilian military. For late1980s and late 2000s we used Landsat TM 5 satellite images. Aerial photographswere interpreted visually using a stereoscope, digitized and mosaic using ErdasImagine v10.0. Polygons were created for each land-cover type, including forest,

Figure 2. Land use=cover changes: Mazagao and Ponta de Pedras.

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advanced secondary succession, early secondary succession, grassland savanna, andother, which included bare soil, water, and impervious surfaces. Landsat TM 5images for the 1980s were classified using unsupervised classification to overcomethe problem of lack of historical training sample data, but images for the 1990sand 2000s benefited from field data collected in the sites during both periods.High-dimensional ISODATA clustering using 60 classes was conducted on eachimage and, when available, integrated with training samples to perform hybridclassification. Unsupervised and supervised samples were analyzed through a combi-nation of visual tools, statistical separability analysis, and spectral evaluation beforeaggregation into the classes already mentioned (detailed description of classificationmethods can be found in Brondızio 2008).

Historical census and land-cover data are validated with ethnographic infor-mation using unstructured and semistructured surveys, community transect walks,and participatory remote sensing methods (Vogt et al. 2006) collected with key infor-mants selected elders in two to three communities of each study landscape.

Results

Both landscapes experienced distinct forest transition in the study period (Figures 2,3A, and 3B). Fluctuations in diversity of agricultural and forest goods produced,their sources and destinations, land and resource use systems, and impact on forestcover are described in the following and summarized in Table 1.

Figure 3. Change in forest cover, land use, population, and number of landholdings inMazagao and Ponta de Pedras since World War II.

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Post-World War II to 2006 Land Cover and Land Use Changes in Mazagao

Forest clearing from World War II to 1976 was at its lowest level in the study periodand occurred primarily around village centers and municipal headquarters (Figure 2and 3A). Extensive rubber tapping and Brazil nut extraction for international mar-kets were the primary commercial activities of smallholders (Figure 4A).

Rural population was very low and grew gradually at the beginning of this per-iod (Figure 3E), while the total area of landholdings was the most extensive of theentire study period. Most households and approximately 99% of their landholdings(Figure 3C) were used for extensive rubber tapping, with a lesser proportion engagedin Brazil nut extraction (Figure 3C) aimed primarily for European markets. Rubberand Brazil nut trees, which occur sparsely in this region, compared to other areas ofthe Amazon, were mainly planted and managed by smallholders, though owned byabsentee landlords with products traded by middlemen.

By the end of the period, the number of smallholdings grew by more than a fac-tor of 5 as smallholders from more distant islands of the North Channel began topurchase land that was nearer to the small but gradually growing cities of Macapa,Santana, Mazagao Novo, and Mazagao Velho. The collapse of the rubber economyby the late 1960s resulted in sale or abandonment of land by oligarchs, and small-holders often used profits from growing timber boom to purchase holdings on flood-plains nearer market centers.

Table 1. Market booms, land-use systems, and impacts on forest cover

LocationBoom

product Market location

Land-use typefor boomproduct

Impact ofland-use onforest cover

Pre-1975 NorthChannel

Rubber International Forestmanagement

Low

Brazil nuts National=international

Forestmanagement

Low

SouthChannel

Cattle=swine

Local=national Pasture Deforestation

Late 1970sto late1980s

NorthChannel

Rubber=Brazilnuts

National=international

Forestmanagement

Low

Manioc=maize

Local Agriculture Temporarydeforestation

Banana Local=national Agroforestry LowTimber National=

internationalExtraction degradation to

deforestationSouth

ChannelManioc Local Agriculture Temporary

deforestationAcai Local Low-intensity

agroforestryLow

Late 1980sto late2000s

NorthChannel

Acai Local=national=international

Low-intensityagroforestry

Low

SouthChannel

Acai Local=national=international

Low-intensityagroforestry

Low on cover

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Forest clearing between 1976 and 1986 occurred along the expanding road net-works connecting village centers and in settlements located along river banks(Figure 2). By the mid 1970s, rubber tapping and collection of Brazil nuts were indecline, while an increasing number of households engaged in commercial timberextraction and banana production (Figure 4A).

The total area of landholdings stayed relatively stable in the period, althoughrural population density per landholding continued its gradual increase (Figure 3Eand 3 G). These changes occurred as smallholders shifted away from rubber tappingand nut extraction to more intensive fallow and forest management for the pro-duction of rapidly growing timber species to supply the timber boom and productionof banana in small agricultural fields. Timber was largely extracted to supply U.S.and European markets, but with an important proportion, including species of sec-ondary market value, going to Macapa to meet demands for construction materialsin the growing capital of the state of Amapa, which was later granted statehood onOctober 5, 1988 (Pinedo-Vasquez et al. 2001).

By the end of this period the rural population began to decline with increasedurban migration (Figure 3E). Smallholders reduced the area of land in fallow and man-aged forests and expanded again agriculture plots to produce crops for the growinglocal markets created from urban population growth. The agricultural fields inswidden-fallow system also expanded and persisted in this phase for commercialbanana production, but never exceeded 4% of total area of landholdings (Figure 3C).More than 40% of smallholders continued to practice cultivation of banana, manioc,maize, and swine husbandry for subsistence and to supply the growing local urbanmarkets (Figure 4A).

From 1986 to 2006, forest clearing, mostly small forest openings, occurred pri-marily along rivers and in remote forest patches, primarily across the floodplains. Bythe late 1980s, the booms in timber and banana were in decline and that of acai palmfruit was on the rise (Figure 4A). Agriculture products became subsistence productswhile acai and other agroforestry and forest resources became market products.

Rural population continued its decline as urban population continued to expand(Figure 3E). This was not a process of rural abandonment. Currently, the majority ofrural population maintains rural and urban residences through different types offamily arrangements (Padoch et al. 2008; Nasuti et al. 2013), which further diversifies

Figure 4. Market booms and busts in Mazagao and Ponta de Pedras since World War II.

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sources of subsistence goods or cash income and flexibility to reorganize livelihoodstrategies over short periods of time.

The total area of land utilized also declined—that is, land use intensified assmallholders reduced the area of fields for banana and annual crop productionand expanded area of managed fallows and forests as well as house gardens forthe intensive production of acai and other agroforestry and forest resources(Figure 3C). In Mazagao in this period nearly 100% of the landholdings includedlarge tracts of enriched managed forests and agroforestry fields that contain acai,diverse rapidly growing timber trees, and other valuable species that also were moreresistant to extreme flood events increasing in this period.

Post-World War II to 2006 Land Cover and Land Use Changesin Ponta de Pedras, South Channel

Forest clearing was limited in the Ponta de Pedras landscape during this period, andit occurred primarily in areas surrounding the municipal headquarters and surround-ing upland communities (Figures 2 and 3B). Largeholders were engaged primarily incattle husbandry for local and national markets. The majority of smallholder house-holds were engaged in rubber tapping for international markets. They were alsoengaged in swine husbandry and manioc production for both subsistence and com-mercial ends (Figure 4B). Commodity trade and land of smallholders were predomi-nantly controlled by absentee landlords.

In this period both urban and rural population grew, with urban growth outpacing rural growth (Figure 3F). The total area of landholdings was relativelylow, with cattle ranches accounting for 69% of the total land use and forestry 29%(Figure 3D). The number of smallholdings increased and the average area of themdecreased (Figure 3H), as smallholders made the transition from extensive rubberextraction and husbandry to more intensive forest management for the productionof fruits and timber (Figure 4B).

In the 1970s to 1985 period forest cover declined and clearing occurred in dif-fuse, small patches in settlements on or near floodplains and in larger patches inupland forest areas where externally funded development projects of the CatholicChurch promoting mechanized agriculture and cattle production were implemented(Figures 2 and 3B). The acai palm fruit, heart of palm, and swine markets boomed.

Rural population, total number of landholdings, and total area of them remainedlargely stable (Figure 3f). More than 60% of households already shifted to intensivemanagement of forests, fallows, and house gardens for the production of acai palmfruit and heart of palm to supply the demands from growing regional urban markets,with the latter increasingly a by-product of the management for acai palm fruit. Somesmallholders also engaged in extensive cattle and buffalo husbandry, timber, andother fruits for both subsistence and local markets (Brondızio 2008). Largeholder cat-tle ranches continued to account for more than 65% of land use (Figure 3D).

From 1980 to 2000 urban population also grew dramatically and rural popu-lation declined slightly as in the case of Mazagao (Figure 3F). However, the numberof rural smallholdings grew, driven by a combination of land redistribution fromlarge holders to smallholders, led by the Catholic Church, and from young house-hold members seeking personal holdings to expand family acai palm fruit pro-duction. The total area of landholdings declined (Figure 3D, H); that is, land useintensified.

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In the 1985 to 2006 period, forest clearing slowed and forest regrowth increased.Forest clearing occurred primarily from urban expansion around the municipalheadquarters and along road corridors connecting smaller rural communities to it.Forest resurgence was widespread in both floodplain and upland rural settlements(Figure 2B) as riverine smallholders abandoned agriculture and ranching projectsand expanded agroforestry systems and managed fallow. More than 75% of small-holders engaged in acai production (Figure 4B), coinciding with continued growthin demand from local, regional, national, and international markets (Brondızio2008). More than 10% of households were still engaged in buffalo husbandry andcollection of different types of forest fruits, nuts, oils, and resins in this period.Annual crop cultivation for the market and cattle husbandry declined dramaticallyby this period.

Rural population remained stable (Figure 3F). However, the number oflandholdings grew dramatically while the total area of landholdings declined(Figures 3F and 3H)—that is, smallholders divided holdings among family membersand continued to intensify land use by reducing the area of agriculture fields andcattle ranches and expanding agroforestry and forest management (Figure 3D),which also are more resistant to reported increases in dry-season floodplain floodfrequency.

Discussion and Conclusion

Forest transitions are often presented as the reversal between two distinct land-usetransitions, one from high to low cover followed by a second transition from lowto high forest cover (Barbier, Burgess, and Grainger 2010; Lambin and Meyfroidt2010). These are often broad explanations as driven by either endogenous factorssuch as forest resource scarcity or exogenous market and development forces result-ing in land abandonment (Lambin and Meyfroidt 2010). This is not the pathwayunderway in the Amazon estuary, but resembles more the STLUI, FT pathway, withboth study areas being continuously occupied by smallholders. While the residents ofthe estuarine region have always been mobile, they have been and continue to beconnected to their lands and forests by keeping residence in rural and urban places(Brookfield et al. 2002; Pinedo-Vasquez and Padoch 2009). This type of rural–urbancirculation and this type of pattern of residence are leading to an increased numberof multisited households (WinklerPrins and de Souza 2005; Padoch et al. 2008), astrategy that also provides household access to education, health services, off-farmemployment, and government benefits (e.g., Bolsa Familia, which pays families tokeep children in school) (Brondizıo, Vogt, and Siqueira 2013).

Data show a number of land-use transitions from agriculture to forests and fromforests to agriculture as boom periods begin and end. Since the end of World War II,landscapes managed by smallholders have not experienced major changes in forestcover. A dynamic (in extent and intensity) and continuous (in spatial configuration)agricultural-fallow-forest landscape mosaic has served as the basis of the local econ-omy, changing in composition and extent according to local, regional, and inter-national demands and environmental shocks and opportunities. Periods ofintensification of resource use centered in one or two products coexisted with exten-sification of other resource systems, maintaining options for future uses. Theregional landscape is better understood as a dynamic mosaic than following linearwaves of land cover transition.

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Since forests remain part of the mosaic production landscape, the forest tran-sition pathway in the Amazon estuary is different from the first land-use transitionphase of predominant FT pathways reported to be common in other regions ofAmazonia and elsewhere in the tropics, where forested lands are converted to agri-cultural lands (Mather and Needle 1998; Rudel et al. 2005; Meyfroidt and Lambin2011; Rudel 2012). This classic process of converting frontier landscapes intolarge-scale plantations and pastures was and continues to be the opposite of pro-cesses in postfrontier mosaic landscapes of smallholders of the estuary, who managea diverse, mosaic landscape rather than in a static landscape converted to monocropplantations (Fortini, Rabelo, and Zarin 2006; Pinedo-Vasquez et al. 2002; Pinedo-Vasquez 2003).

While we found similarities in the trends of forest-transition between Mazagaoand Ponta de Pedras, there were important differences in the socioecological pro-cesses (Figure 2). There were different booms, minibooms, and other driving forcesimpacting the two study landscapes. In the decades after World War II the demandfor landholdings and diversity of boom products including perishable goods weregreater in Ponta de Pedras than in Mazagao, primarily due to that place’s greaterproximity to Belem, the city with greatest total population in the region. Also, fromthe early 1970s to mid 1980s smallholder land-use decisions in Ponta de Pedras wereaffected by development interventions; groups affiliated with the Catholic Churchpurchased large tracts of lands from landlords and redistributed them to small-holders communities organized as a cooperative. Technicians working for a cooper-ative (established by the Catholic Church) promoted plantation-style mechanizedagriculture, and large areas of fallows and managed forests were converted into agri-culture lands. Mechanized agriculture prescribed as part of these projects led to thelargest loss of forests during this period (Brondızio 2008). In these decades afterWorld War II the demand for products from Mazagao also came from Belem. How-ever, due to distance and time to transport, the demand was more for nonperishableresources.

Since the mid 1980s with the creation of Amapa as a state and investment inports and infrastructure in that state, local demand for goods has grown, as wellas direct exportation to southern Brazil and international markets. Smallholdersin both sites now have greater security over resources and in resource use decisions.Currently, in both Ponta de Pedras and Mazagao municipalities, intensive and exten-sive management of fallows and forests for the production of timber, acai, and otherfruits continues to dominate. More households are reducing agricultural land usesand expanding agroforestry forestry and other long-term land use activities to meetboth subsistence needs and market demands (see trajectories in Table 1).

Some broad generalities about the forest transition, with the smallholders’ rolein it, that has occurred in the Amazon estuary through the era of the ‘‘great acceler-ation’’ (Steffen et al. 2004) can be drawn from these two study landscapes. What isbetter known about the transition is that it was a function of households adaptingproduction and land-use systems to external demands created by market boomsand busts, changing from extensive extractivism and slash-and-burn agricultureacross both uplands and floodplains of the estuary (e.g., rubber, Brazil nuts, cattle,and banana) to intensive acai production almost exclusively in small agroforestryfields and forest plots. Less known, but strongly evident in the results of this study,is the attribute of flexibility of the household production and land-use decisionsderived from the diversity of land-use systems that smallholders have practiced for

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generations to produce, manage, and conserve a great diversity of forests and agro-forestry resources. The diversity and complexity of their land-use systems havehelped them to adjust into different landscape configurations and to adapt to exter-nal forces or events.

Based on analysis of more than five decades of data capturing responses to abroad array of booms across multiple generations, we argue that how smallholdersadapted land-use systems to external social and environmental shocks was by (1)using local knowledge of forest management and agriculture to intensify productionunder limited access to technology in response to external opportunities anddemands, (2) the maintenance of a mosaic production landscape that allowed forflexibility in land-use decisions and adjustments to market opportunities and shocks,and (3) development and management of land use systems that produce, manage,and conserve resources across a dynamic forest–fallow–agriculture continuum ratherthan in spatially distinct and temporally static land units (e.g., as often imposed ininterventions to intensify agriculture, mitigate climate impacts, or enhance foodsecurity in smallholder land systems). These adaptations did not remove butexpanded forests.

More studies are needed to identify the factors facilitating or constraining theflexibility of smallholders to change the diversity and configuration of their land-usesystems in response to shifting external forces, and also the role of smallholder landand resource use on the socio-biophysical–environmental resilience of Amazonianlandscapes.

Acknowledgments

Many of the field data presented were gathered by our long-term skilled fieldresearchers; among them we especially acknowledge the work of Valois Delcastagne,Socorro Tavares, Fernando Rabelo, and Marcio Matos in Brazil. We also thankScott Hetrick for assistance with remote sensing data and analysis. Finally, ourgreatest debts are owed to the many rural and urban families who have kindly sharedtheir ideas and information with us over many years in Ponta de Pedras, Mazagao,and Ipixuna Miranda in Brazil.

Funding

This article is based on work supported by the International Development andResearch Center of Canada for the project Socio-Cultural Adaptations of Caboclosin the Amazon Estuary of Brazil to Extreme Tidal Events, the National ScienceFoundation for the project Global Markets, Regional Landscapes, and HouseholdDecisions: Modeling the History of Transformation of the Amazon Estuary [Award:0527578], and the project Deltas: Catalyzing action towards sustainability of deltaicsystems with an integrated modeling framework for risk assessment (Award:1342898), which supported the last stage of revisions of this article. We received indis-pensable aid from many institutions and individuals in Brazil. We particularly thankour sponsors in Brazil, the Nucleo de Altos Estudos Amazonicos of the UniversidadeFederal do Para, the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), and theNational Statistics Offices (IBGE) in Belem and Amapa. Eduardo Brondızioexpresses thanks for the support of Indiana University and of the Institut d’etudes

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avances–Paris. Nathan Vogt thanks the National Institute for Space Research andthe Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) for their support.

Note

1. We are aware of the limitations of these data sets, particularly for the 1950s, 1960s, and1970s, in terms of the accuracy of their estimations of production. However, they representwell general trends in production and commercialization of the products reported here. Asexplained, we used interview data with older informants to gauge the presence and generalimportance of each product during different periods.

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