This article reports on two decades of research into land-use patterns by Amerindians, mestizo colonists and ranching landlords in the Chiguaza region of Amazonian Ecuador. The authors explore two different theoretical frameworks (forest-transition theory and hollow-frontier theory) for understanding and predicting trends of deforestation and reforestation in the field site and in tropical forest frontiers in general. The forest-transition thesis sees out-migration, due to opportunities in industrializing urban centers, as cause for abandoned land to revert to forest. However, the hollow-frontier theory explains a trend in which smallholders exhaust crop land and clear more primary forest while wealthy landlords expand their pastures and agro-industrial fields. In addition to these factors, the authors consider the effects of ethnicity, road proximity, economic downturns, logging, short-cycle shifting cultivation, and crop failure on forest regeneration. Regional satellite images, household surveys, participatory community mapping, and interviews were methods used for assessing the determinants of land use change. Net reforestation was found to occur in some of the Chiguaza communities, but an enduring transition to forest regeneration is questionable. Many mestizos have migrated out, shifting cultivation practiced by remaining Amerindians is found to be conducive to forest regeneration, and there is no aggressive, wealthy land ownership expansion. Neither theory explains this mix of conditions influencing the reforestation of roadsides and interior land in the Chiguaza region. One reason tropical forests do not generally conform to forest transition theory is the diversified nature of contemporary tropical forest migrant livelihoods, which derive incomes from both the rural home and the new urban environment. The authors hypothesize about different possibilities for forest transitions in tropical nations undergoing urbanization and industrialization, and conclude that transitions towards true and lasting reforestation will be individual in context and nature.

Prepared by Megan Glore