Evaluating the drivers of international migration from the Northern Triangle of Central America and its implications for land systems in the region
Population flows from the Northern Triangle (NT) of Central America (Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras) to the United States have increased substantially in the past decade, precipitating humanitarian, social, economic and political crises in the NT, Mexico, and the USA.
This project will integrate social science and analysis of remotely sensed data to investigate the relationship between migration, environmental change, and land cover/land use change (LCLUC) in the NT in the recent past and near-term future, addressing three objectives: 1. Derive agricultural LCLUC metrics related to landscape composition and configuration, and evaluate their spatial and temporal differentiation in the NT in relation to outmigration; 2. Identify factors that drive changes to either agricultural LCLUC or outmigration within target communities and evaluate their strength and significance; 3. Scale up driver-informed models of migration-related LCLUC to predict and monitor ongoing changes to NT land systems. The proposed project will advance theoretical and empirical efforts to characterize the multi-directional interactions between international migration and environmental change, especially of land use and land cover.
Funding: NASA Land Cover/Land Use Change ROSES (2021-2023), Co-Investigator