Change in Tropical Forests: Challenges Addressing Its Complexity

High and sustained rates of forest loss driven by smallholder population pressures was once a prevalent interpretation of human-environment dynamics in the tropical world.  Two decades of research focused on monitoring change in tropical forest cover and addressing its causes reveals a far more complex reality.  Tends and trajectories of change display considerable spatio-temporal variation, including forestation, while the drivers of change are complex, and more often than not, linked in integrative networks of relationships.  These relationships are increasingly being reshaped by global, regional, and local structural transformations that change land uses and the amount of land in forest cover.  At least two challenges confront the next generation of research on tropical forest change.  First, systematic, regional-longitudinal, comparative assessments are needed to facilitate both global downscaling and other modeling efforts.  Second, incorporating the profound structural transformations underway in the tropical world, effecting local-to-regional land dynamics, appear to be pivotal for improved sustainability assessment.