Tole L
Center for Development Studies, Adam Smith Building, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8RT, UK.
Environ Manage. 2001 Oct;28(4):455-67. doi: 10.1007/s002670010236.
Jamaica is a small island that is losing its forest cover at a rapid rate. Due to the dependency of its largely poor population on the many services and functions its forests provide, this loss threatens to have substantial socioeconomic and ecological consequences for the country. Despite these basic facts, the problem of Jamaican deforestation has received very little attention from the scientific community. This article presents results of an island-wide, satellite-based study of forest change for Jamaica for the period 1987-1992, which was supplemented by a field trip to the island in 1999 to assess the overall accuracy of the estimate. Landsat MSS images, which are available only up until 1992, have proved to be an invaluable and cost-effective resource for mapping forest change in the tropics, particularly in large areas. A supervised classification indicates that Jamaica experienced an average annual deforestation rate of 3.9% for this period, a figure higher than existing estimates based on partial ground surveys but lower than the FAO's 1990 Tropical Forest Assessment of 5.3% for 1981-1990. Deforestation estimates for Jamaica's 14 parishes are also presented, based on the integration of satellite-derived forest classification maps with a parish administrative boundaries map of the island in a GIS. A correlation analysis between parish deforestation estimates and socioeconomic and land use/quality indicators derived from official sources suggests that deforestation is occurring most rapidly in highly populated areas possessing large numbers of small farmers who live and work under resource-poor conditions. By providing a sense of the magnitude of and main forest loss hotspots, it is hoped that these national and subnational level forest estimates will draw scientific attention to the problem of deforestation on the island. In addition, the socioeconomic analysis may provide policy-makers and planners with some sense of the relative contribution of underlying driving process in this deforestation as a first step toward the creation of effective social programs to combat the problem.
牙买加是一个小岛国，其森林覆盖率正在迅速下降。由于该国大部分贫困人口依赖森林提供的众多服务和功能，这种损失可能会给该国带来重大的社会经济和生态后果。尽管有这些基本事实，但牙买加森林砍伐问题在科学界却很少受到关注。本文介绍了一项基于卫星的全岛森林变化研究结果，该研究涵盖了1987年至1992年期间的牙买加，并在1999年对该岛进行了实地考察，以评估估计的总体准确性。事实证明，仅到1992年可用的陆地卫星多光谱扫描仪（MSS）图像，是绘制热带地区森林变化，特别是大面积森林变化的宝贵且具有成本效益的资源。一项监督分类表明，在此期间牙买加的年平均森林砍伐率为3.9%，这一数字高于基于部分地面调查的现有估计，但低于粮农组织1990年对1981年至1990年热带森林评估的5.3%。还给出了牙买加14个教区的森林砍伐估计数，这些估计数是通过将卫星衍生的森林分类地图与该岛教区行政边界地图整合到地理信息系统（GIS）中得出的。对教区森林砍伐估计数与来自官方来源的社会经济和土地利用/质量指标之间的相关性分析表明，森林砍伐在人口密集、有大量小农户在资源匮乏条件下生活和工作的地区最为迅速。希望这些国家和次国家层面的森林估计数能让科学界关注该岛的森林砍伐问题，因为它们能让人了解森林损失的规模和主要热点地区。此外，社会经济分析可能会让政策制定者和规划者对这一森林砍伐背后驱动过程的相对贡献有所了解，这是朝着制定有效的社会项目来解决该问题迈出的第一步。
