Linking National Forestry Reform Through Forest Concession Policy and Land Cover Change

In Peru, a new forest reform process laid the foundation for the establishment of a large sector of private small and medium-sized forest enterprises to practice responsible forest management. This paper analyzes the influence of a newly established concession system on forest landscape change. Specifically, the paper examines whether the concession system promoted and increased land-cover changes and changed fragmentation patterns between 2001 and 2010. Classified Landsat images at 2-year intervals from 2001 to 2003 and 2006 to 2010 were used to examine trajectories in forest, non-forest and regrowth areas. Non-linear changes were found to have occurred in each of the forest classes. Changes in fragmentation varied in size, density, aggregation and configuration over the study period. Forest reforms account for changes in specific land-cover classes through pattern dynamics within timber concessions. However, not all results relate to landscape pattern metrics. Although new forest legislation has been important in reorganizing the forest sector, other causal factors including levels of technological and managerial expertise, credit availability and law enforcement structures play a decisive role in the successive implementation of forest legislation.