Geography and Indonesian oil-palm expansion

[Extract] Koh and Ghazoul (1) model oil-palm expansion in Indonesia under multiple scenarios in which the probability of land cover conversion to oil palm is weighted by land cover qualities such as agricultural productivity and carbon content. Their goal was not a predictive model but rather a "broad model" that would make explicit to decision makers the tradeoffs between oil palm, forests cover, biodiversity, and food production. This model has considerable merit but would be improved if geographic factors such as proximity, scale, and location were considered