7-5 Predictive Analysis of Tropical Crop Cultivation in Eastern Thailand Caused By the Effects of COVID-19 and Climate Change

Session: A Change in Focus for Sustainability in Geoscience Education

Presenting Author:

Jackson Williams

Authors:

Williams, Jackson James¹, Seward, Nichole Hailey², Jones, Catherine Luvenia³, Regalado, Karen Guadalupe⁴, Carter, Ryan Farres⁵, Ahdieh, Eleanor Jane⁶

Abstract:

Will the future agricultural landscape return to a pre-pandemic state? If yes, how fast? If not, what will be different? The combined impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change have reshaped Eastern Thailand's agricultural industry with dramatic implications. Urbanization, which heavily fuels climate change, is also becoming an increasingly noteworthy threat to farmers in areas near megacities. This study examines the dual impacts of climate change and a pandemic on tropical agriculture, and predicts the extent to which land cover will urbanize by the year 2030. By utilizing a mixed methods convergent-parallel approach, some of the most important variables driving land use change in the study area are identified and are used to build future scenarios. Qualitative interviews gather information from stakeholders with acute insight into the factors driving this dramatic transition away from pre-pandemic agricultural practices. Concurrently, these findings are used to inform predictive models, which reveal futures of increased urbanization into forests and farmland based on current socioeconomic and environmental trajectories. Thailand’s tropical agriculture sample area will likely not be returning to a pre-pandemic state: too much has changed, and the individuals living in this area have minimal interest in returning to traditional practices. Five predictions were created to analyze potential future scenarios for the future land change in Eastern Thailand, and many of these novel findings can be generalized to South Asian tropical agricultural areas. These findings indicate that the agricultural landscape will not return to a pre-pandemic state and is dramatically affected by climate change and rapid urbanization encroaching from Bangkok, the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC), and other megacity urban areas.

 

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Program. Vol. 57, No. 6, 2025

doi: 10.1130/abs/2025AM-9030

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