Informing Forest Conservation Regulations in Paraguay
This project estimates how changes to the rules governing private LUPs could affect the extent of forest cover and agricultural land in the Paraguayan Chaco through a four-step approach: (1) Assess property owners' compliance that deforestation only occurs in authorized areas and determine deforestation rates by using geospatial overlays, (2) Estimate protected forest area under different potential laws in the undeveloped Paraguayan Chaco region by creating mock properties with simulated land use plans, (3) Integrate the simulated LUP configurations into a machine learning model to examine how potential changes to land use laws might influence future deforestation patterns, and (4) To inform forest conservation regulations by providing INFONA and other stakeholders with an interactive platform for exploring the results.
Group Members: Atahualpa (Ata) Ayala, Dalila Lara, Alexandria (Alex) Reed, Guillermo Romero
Faculty Advisors: Robert Heilmayr
Clients: UCSB Bren School & Environmental Studies Department
