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Making the Hidden Visible: Accelerated Land-Use Change and Degradation Caused by Narco-Trafficking In and Around Central America’s Protected Areas
Project Start Date
01/01/2021
Project End Date
12/31/2025
Grant Number
80NSSC21K0297
Solicitation

Team Members:

Person Name Person role on project Affiliation
Nicholas Magliocca Principal Investigator The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa , USA
Matthew Fagan Co-Investigator University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, United States
Elizabeth Tellman Co-Investigator University of Arizona, Tucson , USA
Jennifer Devine Co-Investigator Texas State University, San Marcos , USA
Kendra McSweeney Co-Investigator Ohio State University, Columbus , USA
Erik Nielsen Co-Investigator Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff , USA
Steven Sesnie Co-Investigator US Fish & Wildlife Service, Southwest Region, Albuquerque , USA
Emil Cherrington Collaborator University of Alabama, Huntsville, Huntsville , USA
Abstract
Around the world, illicit economic activities have profound impacts on land-cover and land-use change (LCLUC). Crimes that exploit the environment are highly lucrative, having reached an estimated global economic value of US$91 to $259 billion per year. One such landscape that has been targeted by various environmental crimes is the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor (MBC) in Central America. The MBC is a patchwork of protected areas, conservation schemes, and wildlife corridors containing an estimated 7-10% of the world’s species, and was established with more than $500 million of domestic and foreign investment. Despite its conservation importance, forest loss rates along the MBC were among the highest in the world over the last two decades. Accelerated deforestation throughout the MBC coincided in space and time with a shift to Central America as the preferred ‘transit zone’ for cocaine trafficking, or ‘narco-trafficking’, accounting for more than 80% of all U.S.-bound cocaine flows since 2010. To slow forest loss and degradation throughout the MBC, we need a more detailed understanding of where, when, and how much narco-trafficking initiates and accelerates LCLUC. Detectable spatio-temporal signatures of these processes are needed to scale-up localized knowledge of narco-trafficking operations to regional and global assessments of the impacts on LCLUC. In the proposed project, we meet this need using narco-trafficking in the Central American MBC as a case study for how to render illicit activity spatially and temporally explicit – in other words, make the hidden visible. We use a novel combination of remote-sensing multitemporal-data fusion, counterfactual land change modeling, and synthesis of criminal activity datasets to characterize and predict the impact of narco-traffickers on LCLUC in and around protected areas across the MBC. Focusing on three internationally recognized protected areas and their surrounding landscapes– Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR) (~ 35,000 km2), Honduras’s Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve (RPBR) (~ 10,500 km2), and Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula (OP) (~ 3,600 km2) – our project addresses three integrated objectives: (1) identify the timing of increased narco-trafficking activity for each PA; (2) locate hotspots of accelerated and/or expanded LUC attributable to narco-trafficking; and (3) quantify LUC and degradation directly and indirectly attributable to narco-trafficking. This project will demonstrate the potential of remote sensing advances in LCLUC research to provide a novel spatially and temporally detailed quantification of land change driven by clandestine processes, which will challenge current perceptions of the relative importance of conventional vs. illicit causes of LCLUC.
Project Research Area

Project Documents

Year Authors Type Title
2024 Nicholas Magliocca Publications Murillo-Sandoval, P. J., Sesnie, S. E., Armas, M. E. O., Magliocca, N., Tellman, B., Devine, J. A., Nielsen, E., & McSweeney, K. (2024). Central America’s agro-ecological suitability for cultivating coca, Erythroxylum spp. Environmental Research Letters, 19(10), 104068. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad7276
2024 Nicholas Magliocca Publications Magliocca, N. R., Carter, N. H., Devine, J. A., Nielsen, E. A., & Sesnie, S. E. (2024). Jaguar conservation is caught in the crossfire of America's' War on Drugs'. Biological Conservation, 296, 110687. doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2024.110687
2024 Nicholas Magliocca Publications Rodewald, A. D., Lello-Smith, A., Magliocca, N. R., McSweeney, K., Strimas-Mackey, M., Sesnie, S. E., & Nielsen, E. A. (2024). Intersection of narco-trafficking, enforcement and bird conservation in the Americas. Nature Sustainability, 1-5. doi.org/10.1038/s41893-024-01365-z
2023 Nicholas Magliocca Publications Magliocca, N.R. (2023). Intersecting security, equity, and sustainability for transformation in the Anthropocene. Anthropocene, 43, 100396: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ancene.2023.100396.
2023 Nicholas Magliocca Publications Magliocca, N.R., Dhungana, P.*, Sink, C.D.* (2023). Review of counterfactual land change modeling for causal inference in land system science. Journal of Land Use Science, 18(1): DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1747423X.2023.2173325.
2022 Matthew Fagan Publications Fagan, M.E., Kim, DH., Settle, W. et al. The expansion of tree plantations across tropical biomes. Nat Sustain 5, 681–688 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00904-w
2022 Nicholas Magliocca Publications Magliocca, N.R., Dolliver, D.S., Curtin, K.M., McSweeney, K., Price*, A.N. (2022). Shifting landscape suitability for cocaine trafficking through Central America in response to counterdrug interdiction. Landscape & Urban Planning, 221: 104359. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2022.104359.
2021 Nicholas Magliocca Publications Tellman, B., McSweeney, K., Manak, L., Devine, J.A., Sesnie, S., Nielsen, E. and Dávila, A. (2021). Narcotrafficking and Land Control in Guatemala and Honduras. Journal of Illicit Economies and Development, 3(1), pp.132–159. DOI: http://doi.org/10.31389/jied.83.
2021 Nicholas Magliocca Publications Magliocca, N.R., Torres, A., Margulies, J.D., Carter, N.H., Gore, M., Arroyo-Quiroz, I., Curtin, K.M., Easter*, T.S., Hübschle, A., Massé, F., McSweeney, K., Rege, A., Tellman, E. (2021). Comparative Analysis of Illicit Supply Network Structure and Operations: Cocaine, Wildlife, and Sand. Journal of Illicit Economies and Development, 3(1): pp. 50–73. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31389/jied.76.