Course:Cons452/AgChange

Description

The New Agrarian Change research project aims to explore the livelihood and food security implications of land-use change and agrarian change in multi-functional landscapes. Landscapes were selected which exhibit a changing land-use practice, and each landscape was subsequently divided it into 3 land use "zones" which represented a gradient of land-use modification. A total of 6 landscapes were sampled, which fall along a gradient of different combinations of agricultural modification, productivity, forest cover, forest use, and global commodity market-access. Using in-depth questionnaires, researchers acquired data to show how these land-use changes are manifesting locally.

Key informant interviews, focus groups, household questionnaires, and detailed farm surveys were used to gather the data. Information available includes demographic information, living conditions, employment/income, assets, detailed farm information, how often respondents visit the forest, what respondents acquire from the forest, crop inputs, resource "calendars" (to see the change in food availability and cash flow throughout the year), and time allocated to different tasks (labour). It is a remarkable dataset in that it looks at the detailed implications of land-use modification across several landscapes.

Upon being granted access to this dataset (you must submit a request), you will be able to download the following files:

• Agrarian Change Methods Manual
• Manifest.txt - A text file with very little information, it mainly outlines which files were downloaded and their file sizes.
• Data dictionary_1.xslx - All of the variables are listed in this excel workbook by name (code-name), what 'type' they are (integer, character, numeric...), and a description of the variable. Note: a lot of the descriptions of the variables don't describe them, rather they say something along the lines of "Refer to Section 1 of the Detailed Farm Survey". This means you must look at the question they asked on the original survey to understand what that variable code-name really means. The original surveys can be found in the Agrarian Change Methods Manual (pdf, mentioned above) in the appendix.

• Data dictionary.xslx - Same as the data dictionary above.
• household_survey_agrarian_change_project_cleaning_script.R - An R script that is designed to "clean up" the dataset. It is well-commented.
• agrarian change household survey data project.Rproj - An R project which has pre-loaded the dataverse_files folder and all its contents so these files should all appear in the files window from the beginning. Open this and then upload the R script if you will be using it.
• household_survey_argraian_change_project_raw_data.csv - The raw data in csv format. All of the variables are listed along the top as the titled of the columns, and all of the data is included in one long list, with one household per row.
• household_survey_agrarian_change_project.csv - The dataset after having been "cleaned up". This is likely the dataset you will use in your projects.

Metadata

Metadata Component	Description
Theme	Food security, local livelihoods, and land-use change
Source	Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)
Purpose	To understand the local livelihood and food-security implications of land-use change and agrarian change in landscapes and to provide insights into how global land-use strategies are manifesting locally
Time Frame	2014-2016
File Type	socioeconomic (survey)
File Format	.csv, .xsls (.txt, .rda)
Structure	one household per row
Projection and coordinate system	N/A
Extent	Bangladesh, Nicaragua, Indonesia, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Zambia, Burkina Faso
Resolution or scale	"Landscape" scale, though this has no strict size limits. A minimum of 100 households in each land use "zone" were sampled, though household names were all anonymized.

Common Problems

• You must request access and permission to use this dataset. To do so, you must have signed up for an account. Please do this in advance as approval to use the dataset may take several days.

Downloading Instructions

1. Go to the url: https://data.cifor.org/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.17528/CIFOR/DATA.00101
2. You can only download the methods manual without an account. If you are not sure if this dataset it right for you, read that manual and see the appendix for the real questionnaires used.
3. If you have decided you would like to use this dataset, sign up for an account in the top right hand corner.
4. Once you are signed into your account, you may request access by selecting all the boxes on the left hand side and pressing the "request access" button on the right hand side. You will be required to fill out a form explaining how you plan to use the data and for how long. Once you have sent this, your request has been sent to CIFOR for approval. Once you have been granted access, you will be notified by email.
5. Follow the link in the email to get access to your dataset. The files will now be available for you to download where it used to say "request access".
6. The files with download as a folder called dataverse_file.zip .
7. Un-zip the folder and you will have all 8 files within that one folder ready for you to use.

Restrictions on Use

Our Community Norms as well as good scientific practices expect that proper credit is given via citation. On their home page they have a citation available for your use.

Use of the data itself is under Creative Commons CC0 - "Public Domain Dedication". The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of his or her rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighbouring rights, to the extent allowed by law. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. See the Creative Commons website for more information on this designation.