By way of illustration of these two general concerns, we demonstrate that the findings of a well known recent study that posits a link between corruption and decreases in forests, elephants, and rhinoceros are fragile to simple conceptual and methodological refinements.
Our results showed that soil moisture decreased in all forest trajectories, while the absolute decrease was lower for permanent forest trajectory (2.53%) than the whole basin (2.61%), afforestation trajectories (2.70%) and deforestation trajectories (2.81%).
Class statistics indicate there has been a significant decrease in forest cover around Apia and an increase in urban area.
There was a 9% decrease in forest cover and 12% increase in cropland between 1990 and 2009.
As a result, the report notes, the deterioration of the rainforest – through logging, fires and land clearance – has resulted in a decrease in forest transpiration and a lengthening of dry seasons.
The Preclassic abandonment is represented in the record as a shift to drier conditions and a strong decrease in forest taxa.
Forest fragmentation was associated with a decrease in forest patch size, which was associated with a rapid increase in the density of small patches (<100 ha), and a decrease in area of interior forest and in connectivity among patches.
Keeping other determinants of deforestation constant, an increase of one percent in agricultural exports over total merchandising exports tends to be associated to an average decrease in forest cover of 0.3percentt, a result that is in line with other empirical results available in the literature10,27.
Parameter estimates indicate that the income difference between the Democratic Republic of Congo (the country in our sample with lowest income per capita) and Guatemala (the turning point in the estimated environmental Kuznets curve) accounts for approximately a 25% decrease in forest cover.
The largest number of municipalities (31), which represents 35.78% of the state's land, were grouped in class IV, indicating a trend in the increase the index of marginalization and the decrease in forest cover.
