About Forefront

Throughout the tropics forested landscapes have been converted into landscapes dominated by agriculture. These landscapes consist of a mosaic of different land uses, and are highly dynamic, reflecting the continuous changes in the interactions between people and the environment. Understanding the mechanisms that underlie and drive the changes in these social-ecological systems, including the complex institutional arrangements, is a crucial step towards reconciliation of key landscape functions: the maintenance of biodiversity, the supply of a wide portfolio of ecosystem services, and meeting the needs of local actors. This requires design and negotiation of targeted land use options, in close collaboration with local actors.

Aims

The program has three main objectives:

  1. The present: to identify and understand the ecological and social drivers that shape agro-forest frontier landscapes and their ecosystem services,
  2. The past: to explain temporal changes in the social-ecological system and their consequences for landscape configurations,
  3. The future: to design adaptive strategies to balance and optimize the supply of ecosystem services in changing landscapes.