Abstract
This article highlights land use changes of composite swidden farming villages in the northern part of Laos under the drastic transformation of political and economic systems at national and regional levels, including civil war, independence, implementation of a planned economy and the introduction of a market-oriented economy, during the last several decades. Interpretation of remotely sensed images and farming system analysis of the selected study villages revealed the extensive development of agriculture coupled with a rapid deforestation in the 1970s and the early 80s and the intensification of land use and commercialization of farming in the following period. These findings suggest two kinds of mechanisms of land use changes: continuous and gradual changes under a social regime and discontinuous and drastic changes when the social regime collapses. This article concludes that the latter mechanism is much more destructive and exploitative than the former and dominates the long-term tendency of land use changes.
