Skip to content
@cp-PYFOREST

PYFOREST

Analyzing deforestation in Paraguayan Chaco, evaluating land use plans impacts, and providing INFONA a dynamic assessment tool.

PYFOREST

Informing Forest Conservation Regulations in Paraguay

Banner This GitHub organization hosts the code and documentation used in a Capstone Project submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Environmental Data Science for the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, University of California, Santa Barbara

Description

The Paraguayan Chaco is a 32.7-million-acre ecoregion and the second-largest forest in South America. The Paraguayan Chaco lost approximately 1.65 million acres of forest between 2017 and 2020 due to deforestation driven by cattle ranching and cropping. Paraguay has a variety of laws in place to conserve forest cover in this region. To develop land in the Paraguayan Chaco, cattle ranchers must submit land use plans (LUPs) that comply with forestry laws enforced by Paraguay's National Forestry Institute (INFONA). These plans must include a forest reserve covering 25% of the designated land, a 100-meter hedgerow buffer, a 100-meter riparian forest, and paddocks of less than 100 hectares where deforestation is authorized. With tensions rising between the need for economic development and forest conservation, policymakers are considering modifying these laws in response to various stakeholders' needs. Potential modifications to these laws could lead to an increase or decrease in the required forest reserves.

However, policymakers are currently facing challenges in understanding how much forest will be conserved under the existing laws and the potential impact of modifying these laws. To address this issue, our project aims to estimate how changes to the rules governing private LUPs would affect the extent of forest cover and agricultural land in the Paraguayan Chaco.

To achieve this goal, we have outlined the following objectives:

  1. Assess the compliance of property owners' execution of their approved LUPs and quantify historical deforestation rates.

  2. Estimate the area designated to be a conserved forest based on current and alternate laws for undeveloped regions.

  3. Predict deforestation patterns in the undeveloped region of the Paraguayan Chaco, including variations in the laws governing LUPs

  4. Provide INFONA with a dynamic means to assess LUP compliance and explore the potential consequences of alternative laws on future deforestation patterns, with the potential to impact future forest policy laws.

This project aims to equip the National Forestry Institute (INFONA) with a dynamic and interactive tool to assess current LUP compliance statistics and explore current and alternate laws' impacts on the Paraguayan Chaco and future deforestation patterns.

Popular repositories Loading

  1. PYFOREST-ML PYFOREST-ML Public

    Utilizing machine learning to examine deforestation rates in the undeveloped region of Paraguay's Chaco

    Jupyter Notebook 4 2

  2. Land-Use-Plan-Simulation Land-Use-Plan-Simulation Public

    Creates mock properties and simulates LUP based on forestry regulations

    R 3 1

  3. Land-Use-Assessment Land-Use-Assessment Public

    HTML 2 1

  4. PYFOREST-Shiny PYFOREST-Shiny Public

    R 1

  5. .github .github Public

Repositories

Showing 5 of 5 repositories
  • PYFOREST-ML Public

    Utilizing machine learning to examine deforestation rates in the undeveloped region of Paraguay's Chaco

    cp-PYFOREST/PYFOREST-ML’s past year of commit activity
    Jupyter Notebook 4 Apache-2.0 2 0 0 Updated Jun 28, 2023
  • cp-PYFOREST/PYFOREST-Shiny’s past year of commit activity
    R 0 1 0 0 Updated Jun 26, 2023
  • cp-PYFOREST/Land-Use-Assessment’s past year of commit activity
    HTML 2 1 0 0 Updated Jun 25, 2023
  • Land-Use-Plan-Simulation Public

    Creates mock properties and simulates LUP based on forestry regulations

    cp-PYFOREST/Land-Use-Plan-Simulation’s past year of commit activity
    R 3 Apache-2.0 1 0 0 Updated Jun 25, 2023
  • .github Public
    cp-PYFOREST/.github’s past year of commit activity
    0 0 0 0 Updated Jun 14, 2023

Top languages

Loading…

Most used topics

Loading…