A soccer game comes down to penalty kicks during a festival celebrating Ex Petroleros' new school building. Settlement is organized into municipalities which have either dispersed or nucleated populations. A school, soccer field and/or church may serve as town center.

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A mosaic of land-use typical of a family withe large holdings. A sugar cane monoculture lies to the left, pasture for a water buffalo in the center cassava in the foreground, and what is probably primary forest in the background. A few families with large and secure land holdings may be in the position to have livestock or plant and process sugar cane into alcohol. Families with smaller and less secure holdings generally have a higher diversity of crops within a given field, but on the other hand, they may not be in a position to manage the land for long-term use.

I am studying socioeconomic dynamics influencing patterns of land use change, a direction motivated by my concern regarding habitat loss and its effects on biodiversity. Among causes of species loss worldwide, land use change tops the list. Tropical rainforests are an area of special concern because of their high levels of biodiversity. In Peru this summer, I initiated a project in which I seek to understand the pattern and rationale of land use decisions by colonists along a highway through the Amazonian rainforest. Deforestation and resource extraction contribute significantly to biodiversity loss. However, I am interested not only in understanding why certain areas are deforested per se, but also whether some combination of socioeconomic situations (e.g. solid property rights) and physical variables (e.g. soil type) lead to more sustainable patterns of use. Sustainable use of land hopefully lessens the demand for further forest clearing.

The highway begins in Iquitos, Peru's largest forest city. It differs from many other Amazonian highways because it doesn't provide a direct connection to the national economy-it goes 100 km to the south to a smaller town called Nauta. Nevertheless, many of the patterns associated with other forest roads are seen there. The road has opened up land to settlement and has allowed extraction of natural resources such as lumber and game.

Me standing in front of the Institute for investigating the Peruvian Amzaon. Investigators at IIAP are my collaborators, and the institution supported me intellectually and logistically in addition to providing a desk, computer, room and board.

I spent my summer working with the Institute for Investigating the Peruvian Amazon (el Instituto de Investigaciones de la Amazonia Peruana, or IIAP), a government initiated but independent research organization. IIAP has been working on an Economic and Ecological Zonification of the area influenced by the Iquitos-Nauta highway. Over half of my time was spent in Iquitos, primarily learning from and networking with scientists from a range of disciplines, not only from IIAP but also from Non-Governmental Organizations, the Spanish bilateral aid agency, local and North American universities, and INRENA (Instituto Nacional de Recursos Naturales). I also was taking Spanish lessons and preparing to go into the field. Space considerations preclude me from elucidating the large amount of information on the history, geography, and economy of the region which I reaped.

The other critical portion of my work consisted of several weeks in the field. I visited various communities and sites in the region. This breadth supplemented in-depth research in the town of Ex Petroleros (km 42), where I lived and worked with an assistant in three stints for a total of 17 days.

Populations in Region, 1996 (Ch 8, Romero y Oritz, in Geoecología y Desarrollo Amazónico, p 369-387.)

Population Location
305,500 Iquitos
10,500 Nauta
7,500 Highway
31,800 Nearby River Communities (on the Amazon, Itaya, and Nanay rivers)

FIELD RESEARCH:

A muddy road served Ex Petroleros for 15 years, but only in the past three years has the highway been paved. The recent influx of mostly landless immagrants has resulted in a building boom on either side of the highway. These families are granted 10m by 10m plots for their homes, but must beg, borrow or squat upon land to grow food.

I visited a variety of locations to get a broad social and environmental overview of the region. This included visits to various communities along the edge of the highway, a community along a penetration trail to the west, two river communities along the Rio Itaya (about a two hour hike east of the highway), and a community halfway between the highway and the river. My in depth work focused mainly in the town of Ex Petroleros, Zone 1 along the highway at km 42. There were two phases to my fieldwork in Ex Petroleros.

FIRST PHASE: informal interviews covering history, economy

Economic activities A basic activity of almost all families is subsistence farming: slash and burn followed by cultivation of cassava, plantain, rice, some maize. Mixed within this are often several fruit species, and occasionally lumber species. The subsistence crops are also sometimes sold. Other economic activities include fish farms, fruit, leaves for thatch, medicinal plants, livestock (chicken and occasionally ducks in most households; pigs in a few; water buffalo in one), lumber harvesting, sugar cane, palm hearts, and charcoal production.

Brief history.
· Settled around 1985. Named Ex Petroleros after workers who had seen the end of the petroleum work boom. Dirt road.

· 1985-1988 Credit. Extensive cultivation. Manioc, plantain, generally. High cultivation. Couldn't pay back because couldn't get to market: road muddy, impassible.

· 1980-1995: End of credit. Almost entirely subsistence farming. Some people leave. Amount of agriculture lower.

· 1996: Palm hearts extension and loan efforts in high gear

· 1997-2000: Highway paved past Ex Petroleros in 1997. Market suddenly accessible. Increase in agricultural production. Large migration of largely landless families.

· 1999: palm heart prices crash, leaving campesinos facing low prices almost across the board for agricultural products. Fish and a few species of bushmeat are among few items that demand a premium.

People repeatedly noted that extractive forest resources require a longer hike. This is for game, lumber, and leaves for roof thatching.

SECOND TRIP: Testing formal survey with more specific research questions in mind
In my second and third trips to Ex Petroleros, I focused on a test run of a more formal survey, with explicit questions. The survey covered family's demographics; history; economic data such as production, autoconsumption, and vending; and land use practices. The results of the survey are as yet unanalyzed, but the framework for my research follows. I plan to follow up my work with further interviews next summer.

Research framework:

I am interested in socioeconomic ties to land use decisions on a household level. While I am certainly concerned about rates and patterns of eforestation, I recognize that land use decisions are more complex than simply choosing whether "to clear or not to clear". Different management patterns affect the length of time over which land remains productive. Practices which maintain the productivity of land over the long term may reduce the need to clear more land. I am thus interested in socioeconomic dynamics which lead to more "sustainable" use.

The exercise in my mind can be separated into three parts:

1. Is there a typology of land users? Can users be categorized?
2. Are there differences in the "sustainability" of land use between different user-types?
3. What is the rationale behind land use decisions?

These questions were in mind when I designed my survey questionnaire.

In addressing the first two questions (typology and their relation to sustainability), studies of colonists in Ecuador and Brazil have 1) revealed different types of land users and 2) that their different land use patterns have clear ramifications for sustainability.

1. Typology

Factors expected to be important in land use decisions:

Family's History
Income: not just monetary, but autoconsumption
Assets
Labor availability
Land acreage
Land TITLE / security of property rights
Desires for future

Soil

Distance to market

2. Sustainability

My current attempt to define sustainable, including measurable indices, is as follows. 1) Minimum impact on ecosystems and ecosystem services. May include how much acreage is cleared. 2) Production which is maintained through time: a pattern of land use which does not deplete the physical soil or its nutrients. Largely speaking of agroforestry systems. Specific indices include: management of land over the long term rather than using and abandoning plots; longer fallow period; planting of fruit and lumber species which increase the value of fallow areas; and use of legumes to maintain soils and soil nutrients.

Rationale of land use choices

Me at kilometer 41 of the Iquitos-Nauta in the town of Ex Petroleros, where I lived and conducted interviews for 17 days.

The rationale behind land use decisions hasn't been analyzed in this region. I am addressing this from a couple of directions. First is an economic framework, looking at optimization of land use by parcel, or optimization of household activity (including labor in various land uses plus labor in Iquitos). My intention is to develop a household economic model, potentially one which is spatially explicit. Another important method is to ask motivation for land use decisions during interviews. I will be returning in the summer of 2001 to continue these studies.

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