Operationalizing Vulnerability: Land System Dynamics in a Transfrontier Conservation Area

Wildlife impacts and vulnerable livelihoods in a transfrontier conservation landscape

Interactions between humans and wildlife resulting in negative impacts are among the most pressing conservation challenges globally. In regions of smallholder livestock and crop production, interactions with wildlife can compromise human well-being and motivate negative sentiment and retaliation toward wildlife, undermining conservation goals. Although impacts may be unavoidable when human and wildlife land use overlap, scant large-scale human data exist quantifying the direct costs of wildlife to livelihoods. In a landscape of global importance for wildlife conservation in southern Africa, we quantified costs for people living with wildlife through a fundamental measure of human well-being, food security, and we tested whether existing livelihood strategies buffer certain households against crop depredation by wildlife, predominantly elephants. To do this, we estimated Bayesian multilevel statistical models based on multicounty household data (n = 711) and interpreted model results in the context of spatial data from participatory land-use mapping. Reported crop depredation by wildlife was widespread. Over half of the sample households were affected and household food security was reduced significantly (odds ratio 0.37 [0.22, 0.63]). The most food insecure households relied on gathered food sources and welfare programs. In the event of crop depredation by wildlife, these 2 livelihood sources buffered or reduced harmful effects of depredation. The presence of buffering strategies suggests a targeted compensation strategy could benefit the region's most vulnerable people. Such strategies should be combined with dynamic and spatially explicit land-use planning that may reduce the frequency of negative human-wildlife impacts. Quantifying and mitigating the human costs from wildlife are necessary steps in working toward human-wildlife coexistence.

Remote Sensing of Human–Environment Interactions in Global Change Research: A Review of Advances, Challenges and Future Directions

The role of remote sensing and human–environment interactions (HEI) research in social and environmental decision-making has steadily increased along with numerous technological and methodological advances in the global environmental change field. Given the growing inter- and trans-disciplinary nature of studies focused on understanding the human dimensions of global change (HDGC), the need for a synchronization of agendas is evident. We conduct a bibliometric assessment and review of the last two decades of peer-reviewed literature to ascertain what the trends and current directions of integrating remote sensing into HEI research have been and discuss emerging themes, challenges, and opportunities. Despite advances in applying remote sensing to understanding ever more complex HEI fields such as land use/land cover change and landscape degradation, agricultural dynamics, urban geography and ecology, natural hazards, water resources, epidemiology, or paleo HEIs, challenges remain in acquiring and leveraging accurately georeferenced social data and establishing transferable protocols for data integration. However, recent advances in micro-satellite, unmanned aerial systems (UASs), and sensor technology are opening new avenues of integration of remotely sensed data into HEI research at scales relevant for decision-making purposes that simultaneously catalyze developments in HDGC research. Emerging or underutilized methodologies and technologies such as thermal sensing, digital soil mapping, citizen science, UASs, cloud computing, mobile mapping, or the use of “humans as sensors” will continue to enhance the relevance of HEI research in achieving sustainable development goals and driving the science of HDGC further.