WCS 3-Sentence Science

Understanding Myanmar’s Changing Forests

April 15, 2019

Photo credit: WCS Myanmar Program

Each year, Wildlife Conservation Society scientists publish more than 300 peer-reviewed studies and papers. “WCS 3-Sentence Science” is a regular tip-sheet — in bite sized helpings — of some of this published work.

Here we present Kyaw Thinn Latt’s work on forests in Myanmar:

1. Myanmar’s Tanintharyi region, which contains one of the last significant contiguous forest areas in Southeast Asia, has been heavily deforested in recent decades.
2. Researchers analyzed the causes of land-use and land-cover change “regime shifts” that transformed these forests to agricultural lands, identifying ceasefires between ethnic groups and the government, and enhanced business relations with Thailand and China as the main drivers.
3. By creating a framework to better understand the causes of land-cover regime shifts, policymakers can preempt future shifts in Tanintharyi, and can apply this framework to the study of land change in other regions.

Study and Journal: “Integrating analytical frameworks to investigate land-cover regime shifts in dynamic landscapes” from Sustainability
WCS Co-Author(s): Kyaw Thinn Latt , Senior Strategy Marine Manager, WCS Myanmar

For more information, contact: Stephen Sautner, 718–220–3682, ssautner@wcs.org.