FIRE IN THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON: A SPATIALLY EXPLICIT MODEL FOR POLICY IMPACT ANALYSIS*

ABSTRACT.  This article implements a spatially explicit model to estimate the probability of forest and agricultural fires in the Brazilian Amazon. We innovate by using variables that reflect farm-gate prices of beef and soy, and also provide a conceptual model of field management and deforestation fires to simulate the impact of road-paving, cattle exports, and conservation area designation on the occurrence of fire. Our analysis shows that fire is positively correlated with the price of beef and soy, and that the creation of new conservation units may offset the negative environmental impacts caused by the increasing number of fire events associated with early stages of frontier development.     

ROAD INVESTMENTS,SPATIAL SPILLOVERS,AND DEFORESTATION IN THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON*

ABSTRACT Understanding the impact of road investments on deforestation is part of a complete evaluation of the expansion of infrastructure for development. We find evidence of spatial spillovers from roads in the Brazilian Amazon: deforestation rises in the census tracts that lack roads but are in the same county as and within 100 km of a tract with a new paved or unpaved road. At greater distances from the new roads the evidence is mixed, including negative coefficients of inconsistent significance between 100 and 300 km, and if anything, higher neighbor deforestation at distances over 300 km.     

Liminality in nature-based tourism experiences as mediated through social media

Abstract

The intersection between social media, liminality and nature-based tourism experiences hasn’t been the focus of previous tourism research. Such intersection, on the other hand, is illustrative of how social media relate to the constitution and performance of tourism spatialities, tourist identities, storytelling and place-making, and can lead to relevant theoretical contributes. We aim to investigate how liminality is expressed in relation to nature-based experiences by tourists on social media, and what role social media plays in mediating liminality during nature-based tourism experiences. The analysis is based on a participatory netnography of images and text posts, as well as online interviews with users of the popular social media Instagram. Findings show that the expression of tourism experiences in nature is closely related to specific notions of liminal otherness as opposed to the urban life and the everyday, where nature and wilderness are expressed as related to the genuine, the authentic and a true inner self. Creative combinations of pictures, captions and hashtags make it easier for tourists to express the contrast between the natural landscape and the everyday landscape once they returned home. These combinations also relate closely to performances of resistant and alternative selves and communities. At the same time, such performances are mediated and contested between freedom of self-expression, surveillance and social norms, an aspect that makes their liminal nature ambiguous.