Urbanization, Agricultural Intensification, and Habitat Alteration in Vietnam: Modeling Transitional Development and Emerging Infectious Diseases
Abstract
Our overarching hypothesis is that new risks, in this case the H5N1 strain of avian influenza, emerge during transitions between stages of development. Moreover, these risks are not coincidental but occur precisely because of the in-between nature of the coupled human-natural system at the point when things are neither traditional nor modern but resemble the state of chaos, release and reorganization. We are testing this hypothesis in Vietnam using demographic, social, economic, and environmental data collected in national censuses and analyzed at commune and district levels to identify communes and districts that are traditional, modern, and transitional (peri-urban). Using data from the 2006 agricultural census that capture both the changing nature of the built environment (types of sanitation systems) and the loss of and diversification of agriculture systems (percent of households whose major source of income is from agriculture, and percent of land under agriculture, forests, and aquaculture), and a normalized difference vegetation index from 2006 Landsat images we created a national scale urbanicity map for Vietnam. Field work in the summer of 2011 showed this map to be an accurate (approximately 85%) approximation of traditional (rural), transitional (periurban), and modern (urban) communes. Preliminary results suggest that over 7% of the country's land area and roughly 15% of its population resides in periurban neighborhoods, and that these areas do have a statistically significant greater incidence of AVI as measured in chicken deaths than traditional and modern communes (Table 1). Transitional neighborhoods such as these force planners to ask two questions. To what extent does the dichotomy of urban/rural makes sense in the context of Vietnam, when large areas and parts of the population are caught between the two? Second, how can planners and policy makers effectively provide for basic public goods and services in these contexts?Classification of places in Vietnam based on agricultural income, toilets and land under agriculture, forests and aqua (homes and enterprises) and NDVIσ In general denser vegetation canopies have higher NDVI valueφ Simpson's index, a value of 0 indicates no diversity and a value of 1 indicated infinite diversity
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012AGUFM.B51J..06F
- Keywords:
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- 0439 BIOGEOSCIENCES / Ecosystems;
- structure and dynamics;
- 1632 GLOBAL CHANGE / Land cover change;
- 6309 POLICY SCIENCES / Decision making under uncertainty;
- 9320 GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION / Asia