Editor's note:
Assessing the influence of landscape conservation and protected areas on social wellbeing using random forest machine learning
May 20, 2024
Together with colleagues at CIESIN & Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, AC4 Director, Dr. Joshua D. Fisher, combined large N social surveys with earth observation data to examine the influence of protected areas and nature conservation on household wellbeing. By using machine learning approaches they calculated the influence of proximity to a protected area on a novel multidimensional index of wellbeing, and further examined how other factors (conflict exposure, perceived security, exposure to natural hazards, land cover change, local and regional governance, etc) influence wellbeing performance.