Abstract
Livestock production is a major driver of global environmental change, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss, primarily through the conversion of tropical forests to pasture.
Yet, livestock occur in diverse production systems, each with unique impacts depending on the social-ecological context in which they are embedded. While understanding the spatial distribution of different livestock systems is crucial for sustainability planning, this geography remains unmapped for many regions, leaving policymakers and researchers with a critical data gap. Here, we use largely untapped spatial datasets on livestock, including vaccination, registers, and transaction data, and apply active learning and decision trees to classify and map major livestock systems at scale.
We demonstrate our approach for the 4.2 million square kilometres Dry Diagonal covering the Caatinga, Cerrado, Chiquitano, and Chaco ecoregions across parts of Argentina, Bolivia, and Brazil, which are global hotspots for livestock production and deforestation. Three main findings emerge.
- First, we identified eleven distinct livestock systems across the South American Dry Diagonal, encompassing pastoralists, small-scale, and capitalized systems.
- Second, analysing the spatial determinants of these livestock systems revealed small-scale and pastoralist systems’ association with arid, less productive areas, highlighting their adaptive capacity as well as marginalization.
- Third, mapping livestock systems revealed a clear spatial segregation of production models: large-scale, capitalized systems dominate the Cerrado and Humid Chaco, while small-scale and pastoralist systems are concentrated in the more arid Dry Chaco and Caatinga. This reflects historical land-use patterns, institutional factors, and local social-ecological conditions.
Together, the diverse patterns of livestock production we uncover highlight the need for targeted, context-sensitive land and livestock management strategies in tropical dry woodlands.
Jamie Burton
Ph.D. student
Pedro Fernandez
Postdoctoral scientist
Matthias Baumann
Senior Researcher
Macarena Tasquer
Ph.D. Student
