(A) Location of national reserves and the area under study in Costa Rica M E Fagan R S DeFries S E Sesnie J P Arroyo W Walker C Soto R L Chazdon A Sanchun 10.6084/m9.figshare.1011529.v1 https://iop.figshare.com/articles/figure/_A_Location_of_national_reserves_and_the_area_under_study_in_Costa_Rica/1011529 <p><strong>Figure 2.</strong> (A) Location of national reserves and the area under study in Costa Rica. The SJLS Biological Corridor connects Nicaragua's Indio Maíz Biological Reserve and several Costa Rican national parks in the Central Volcanic Range. (B) Land cover map of the area under study (outlined in red and yellow) in 2011. Note that 5% of the area is under pineapple cultivation.</p> <p><strong>Abstract</strong></p> <p>Forest protection policies potentially reduce deforestation and re-direct agricultural expansion to already-cleared areas. Using satellite imagery, we assessed whether deforestation for conversion to pasture and cropland decreased in the lowlands of northern Costa Rica following the 1996 ban on forest clearing, despite a tripling of area under pineapple cultivation in the last decade. We observed that following the ban, mature forest loss decreased from 2.2% to 1.2% per year, and the proportion of pineapple and other export-oriented cropland derived from mature forest declined from 16.4% to 1.9%. The post-ban expansion of pineapples and other crops largely replaced pasture, exotic and native tree plantations, and secondary forests. Overall, there was a small net gain in forest cover due to a shifting mosaic of regrowth and clearing in pastures, but cropland expansion decreased reforestation rates. We conclude that forest protection efforts in northern Costa Rica have likely slowed mature forest loss and succeeded in re-directing expansion of cropland to areas outside mature forest. Our results suggest that deforestation bans may protect mature forests better than older forest regrowth and may restrict clearing for large-scale crops more effectively than clearing for pasture.</p> 2013-08-05 00:00:00 Costa Rica Abstract Forest protection policies pasture pineapple cultivation cropland forest protection efforts sjls forest loss Central Volcanic Range Environmental Science