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Understanding how biodiversity responds to intensifying agriculture is critical to mitigating the trade‐offs between them. These trade‐offs are particularly strong in tropical and subtropical deforestation frontiers, yet it remains unclear how changing landscape context in such frontiers alters agriculture–biodiversity trade–offs.We focus on the Argentinean Chaco, a global deforestation hotspot, to explore how landscape context shapes trade‐off curves between agricultural intensity and avian biodiversity. We use a space‐for‐time approach and integrate a large field dataset of bird communities (197 species, 234 survey plots), three agricultural intensity metrics (meat yield, energy yield and profit) and a range of environmental covariates in a hierarchical Bayesian occupancy framework.Woodland extent in the landscape consistently determines how individual bird species, and the bird community as a whole, respond to agricultural intensity. Many species switch in their fundamental response, from decreasing occupancy with increased agricultural intensity when woodland extent in the landscape is low (loser species), to increasing occupancy with increased agricultural intensity when woodland extent is high (winner species).This suggests that landscape context strongly mediates who wins and loses along agricultural intensity gradients. Likewise, where landscapes change, such as in deforestation frontiers, the very nature of the agriculture–biodiversity trade–offs can change as landscapes transformation progresses.Synthesis and applications. Schemes to mitigate agriculture–biodiversity trade–offs, such as land sparing or sharing, must consider landscape context. Strategies that are identified based on a snapshot of data risk failure in dynamic landscapes, particularly where agricultural expansion continues to reduce natural habitats. Rather than a single, fixed strategy, adaptive management of agriculture–biodiversity trade–offs is needed in such situations. Here we provide a toolset for considering changing landscape contexts when exploring such trade‐offs. This can help to better align agriculture and biodiversity in tropical and subtropical deforestation frontiers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Impacts of cattle production vary among different production systems, but data on their distribution is scarce for most world regions. In this work, we combine datasets on cattle vaccination locations and land cover in a regression framework to define and map major cattle production systems in the Argentinean Dry Chaco. We also explore how cattle occurrence relates to spatial determinants. Results indicate that the region harbors about 5.5 million heads. Cattle density was mainly described by the share of pasture (69.9%), cropland (28.1%) and aridity (23.8%). We identified 12-major cattle production systems: six cow-calf, three whole-cycle, and three fattening systems. Of these, four systems had high woodland cover (>85%). Data generated is available in a website. Understanding the distribution of cattle production systems is important to assess the environmental impacts of beef production at broad scales. Integrating vaccination data with land-cover information provides a promising avenue to identify livestock systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International conservation funding to low- and middle-income countries has increased significantly in recent years. However, understanding of the underlying factors driving the geographic distribution of such funding remains limited. This study aimed to identify the relative importance of five factors (i.e., conservation targets, threat levels, costs, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and preexisting investment) that potentially influence conservation funding allocation at the subnational level in major deforestation regions of South America between 1987 and 2013. Overall, we found that funding was mainly allocated to remote areas with high species richness and carbon storage, while areas with high threat levels were often overlooked, especially until 2008. After 2008, international donors committed more funding to areas with high carbon storage, but not areas with high species richness, suggesting the prominence of climate-related concerns over biodiversity conservation. Although often advocated, we did not find evidence supporting Indigenous Peoples and local communities being important in explaining funding allocation. However, we identified a strong preference for the Amazon as a charismatic ecoregion. Our findings underscore the diverse and changing factors that drive conservation funding, highlighting the importance of subnational analyses in aligning international conservation funding with local conservation needs from the perspectives of different actors. We hope that our study will contribute to the ongoing conversation on diverse values in conservation and inform decision-making for future funding allocations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon emissions from land-use changes in tropical dry forest systems are poorly understood, although they are likely globally significant. The South American Chaco has recently emerged as a hot spot of agricultural expansion and intensification, as cattle ranching and soybean cultivation expand into forests, and as soybean cultivation replaces grazing lands. Still, our knowledge of the rates and spatial patterns of these land-use changes and how they affected carbon emissions remains partial. We used the Landsat satellite image archive to reconstruct land-use change over the past 30 years and applied a carbon bookkeeping model to quantify how these changes affected carbon budgets. Between 1985 and 2013, more than 142 000 km2 of the Chaco's forests, equaling 20% of all forest, was replaced by croplands (38.9%) or grazing lands (61.1%). Of those grazing lands that existed in 1985, about 40% were subsequently converted to cropland. These land-use changes resulted in substantial carbon emissions, totaling 824 Tg C between 1985 and 2013, and 46.2 Tg C for 2013 alone. The majority of these emissions came from forest-to-grazing-land conversions (68%), but post-deforestation land-use change triggered an additional 52.6 Tg C. Although tropical dry forests are less carbon-dense than moist tropical forests, carbon emissions from land-use change in the Chaco were similar in magnitude to those from other major tropical deforestation frontiers. Our study thus highlights the urgent need for an improved monitoring of the often overlooked tropical dry forests and savannas, and more broadly speaking the value of the Landsat image archive for quantifying carbon fluxes from land change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]