Maps tease apart complex relationship between agriculture and deforestation in DRC

When a farmer cuts down a tree in the Democratic Republic of Congo, there’s often a reason for it. She’s most likely clearing the land to plant crops — the rice and corn and cassava that will see her family through another year. And chances are good that it’s an area she, or her husband or father or mother, has cleared before. She’ll farm this plot for a few years, and then when the soil tires and the nutrients have been used up, she’ll move on to a new plot. For all its bizarre and wondrous botanical diversity, the soil in the Congo Basin is pretty poor on the whole. So once the earth in a particular plot is spent, the farmer will leave it alone for a period of time, ranging from a few years up to about two decades in a place like the DRC. Then, she’ll move on to clear another patch of land, and the pattern repeats itself. The problem for scientists looking at satellite images is that it’s difficult to figure out whether they’re seeing the clearing of land that’s been farmed for decades or centuries, or blasts of new deforestation in relatively untouched rainforest. Up until now, all of that tree cover loss has been lumped together for the most part, says geospatial scientist Giuseppe Molinario. An aerial shot of farmers using fire to prepare a field for planting in DRC. Photo by John C. Cannon. To gain a more nuanced understanding of what…

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