Agricultural Land Use Change in Central and Northeast Thailand: Effects on Biomass Emissions, Soil Quality, and Rural Livelihoods

The overall goal of this project is to understand the impacts of recent land use changes in Central and Northeast Thailand on biomass emissions, soil quality, and economic well-being in rural communities. The specific objectives are to: 1) map major cropping system conversions (e.g. rice to sugarcane) from 2010-2014 and 2014-2018 at 30-m spatial resolution using a combination of Landsat 5, 7 and 8, IRS-P6 AWiFS, Sentinel 1 and 2 satellite datasets; 2) implement Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) and remote sensing EPIC modeling frameworks to quantify the impacts of residue burning and alternative residue management strategies under rice and sugarcane production on crop productivity, soil erosion and carbon cycling at 1-km spatial resolution; 3) estimate spatially-explicit biomass emissions using an improved bottom-up approach; 4) implement an integrated socio-economic modeling framework to quantify the socio-economic impacts of cropping system conversions and residue management practices; and 5) understand farmers’ willingness  to adopt sustainable management practices and barriers and incentives to adaptation of these practices.