We applied a participatory mapping approach supported by very high-resolution satellite imagery to reconstruct spatially explicit, year-to-year land use transitions in two highly biodiverse, data-scarce forest frontier landscapes in north-eastern Madagascar. We explored these transitions in the light of major continuous trends and discrete events highlighted by local farmers as influencing their land use decisions. Our results suggest that the process of establishing protected areas first reinforced ongoing deforestation, but later led to a significant reduction of forest loss rates. Recent cash crop booms appear to have induced agricultural intensification processes in our study landscapes, while also putting additional pressure on forests, as people may be encouraged to clear forest for cash crop cultivation. These findings are crucial to understanding rapid land use change processes in forest frontier contexts in the humid tropics, and especially to informing natural resource governance and development initiatives in complex mosaic landscapes.

我们应用了由高分辨率卫星图像支持的参与式映射方法，在马达加斯加东北部的两个高度生物多样化，数据稀缺的森林边境景观中，重建了空间明晰的，逐年的土地利用过渡。我们根据主要的持续趋势和当地农民强调其影响土地使用决策的离散事件来探讨这些过渡。我们的结果表明，建立保护区的过程首先加剧了持续的森林砍伐，但随后导致森林损失率大大降低。最近的经济作物繁荣似乎在我们的研究景观中引发了农业集约化进程，同时也给森林带来了额外的压力，因为可能会鼓励人们砍伐森林进行经济作物种植。