The Geographical Journal, Vol. 170, No. 3, September 2004, pp.

238–255

Accessibility and land-use patterns at the forest

Blackwell Publishing, Ltd.

fringe in the northeastern part of the Philippines

PETER H VERBURG*, KOEN P OVERMARS*,† AND NOL WITTE*
*Department of Environmental Sciences, Wageningen University, PO Box 37, 6700 AA Wageningen,
The Netherlands
E-mail: peter.verburg@wur.nl
†Centre of Environmental Science, Leiden University,
PO Box 9518, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
This paper was accepted for publication in February 2004

Accessibility is considered to be one of the most important determinants of use and land-
cover change. In rural land-use change studies, the accessibility situation is often described
by simple measures of the distance to a location of interest. In this paper, different
measures of access are tested for a rural area at the forest fringe in the northeastern
Philippines. The accessibility measures addressed range from simple distance measures
to land-use type specific transport costs and a population potential measure. The
different measures are tested based on their capacity to explain the spatial pattern of
different land-use types. A comparison of the findings based on a spatial analysis and an
analysis of household level data is made. It is concluded that the relation between land
use and accessibility is dependent on the specific characteristics of the different land-use
types. The (dis-)advantages of the use of the different accessibility measures are discussed.

KEY WORDS: Philippines, land-use change, deforestation, accessibility,

transportation costs, logistic regression

models and market potentials in his ‘new economic

Introduction
geography’ (Krugman 1998 1999).

A
ccessibility is considered to be one of the
most important driving factors of land-use
and land-cover change (Angelsen and
Kaimowitz 1999; Chomitz and Gray 1996; Geist
and Lambin 2002). The ability that people have to
reach desired locations, such as a market or forest
land, can influence both the extent and the location
of land-use conversions. The importance of incorp-
orating accessibility analysis in spatial analysis of
land-use patterns has been acknowledged since
von Thünen’s time (Alonso 1964; Hall 1966). Von
Thünen’s theory is still frequently used as a
theoretical basis for empirical studies that relate
land-use (change) patterns to the accessibility of a
location (Chomitz and Gray 1996; Nelson et al.
2001). Accessibility also has an important role in
more recent theories of (economic) geography; for
example, Krugman has advocated the use of gravity
0016-7398/04/0002-0001/$00.20/0
Most studies of land-use and land-cover change,
which incorporate accessibility, focus on deforestation.
Analytical and empirical studies find that improved
access to forests accelerates deforestation. Exam-
ples of studies that have used remote sensing and
geographical information system (GIS) techniques
to relate the occurrence of roads or other indicators
of access to deforestation patterns include Nepstad
et al. (2001), Soares-Filho et al. (2001), Munroe
et al. (2002) and Pfaff (1999) for Central America
and the Amazon region, Cropper et al. (2001),
Müller and Zeller (2002) and Stolle et al. (2003)
for Asia, and Mertens and Lambin (1997) for Africa.
These results are also supported by nonspatial, multi-
country, regression models (Pahari and Marai 1999;
Rudel and Roper 1997), and by studies based on
the analysis of household-level data (Vance and
Geoghegan 2002; Pan et al. 2004). It should be noted
© 2004 The Royal Geographical Society
 Accessibility at the forest fringe in the northeastern Philippines
that the simple correlation between the distance to
roads and deforestation found in regression models
tends to overstate the causality, since some roads
are built precisely because an area has been cleared
and settled, rather than vice versa (Angelsen and
Kaimowitz 1999).
Most of the above-mentioned studies focus on
the relation between accessibility and deforestation
without taking into account the different land uses
at the forest fringe. Different pathways of land-use
change can lead to deforestation and the different
land-use types that replace forest have different
accessibility requirements. Therefore, undifferenti-
ated analysis of all agricultural land-use types is
unable to distinguish the type of specific conditions
and will not help much in understanding the inter-
actions between accessibility and deforestation
(Southworth and Tucker 2001). Nagendra et al.
(2003) indicate, in a case study in Honduras, that
recent deforestation is found in areas located away
from roads and at higher altitudes, a trend that is
contrary to theories such as that of von Thünen. The
results are explained by the promotion of mountain
coffee production by the government. Specific con-
ditions required by a crop, in combination with an
economic policy, can therefore significantly modify
the expected relationship between accessibility and
land-use change. Similar findings were obtained
by Mertens et al. (2002), who found that different
types of producers are affected in various ways by
accessibility issues. Road development turned out to
be important in explaining deforestation processes
due to small-scale colonization, but less significant
for large-scale deforestation.
Most land-use and land-cover studies straight-
forwardly use topographic maps and straight-line
distances to roads or markets as a measure of the
accessibility (Liu et al. 1993; Ludeke 1990; Nagendra
et al. 2003; Stolle et al. 2003). The most consistent
independent sources of data for this type of analysis
are digital geographic databases of transport net-
works and the location of villages, markets and
other facilities to which people might wish to
travel. It should be noted, though, that published
maps and digital data sets of transportation networks
are often incomplete and may include roads that
have become unusable or that have been planned
but were never completed. More importantly,
distance may not be the most appropriate measure
where the quality of the transport network is highly
variable, or where the cost of using public transport
must be taken into account. Mertens et al. (2002)
found in a case study in the Amazon that the role
and impact of roads depends on the type of road.
A measure of travel cost or travel time can provide
a more realistic measure in such a situation. Further-
more, whatever measure is chosen, the measure must
239
be calibrated to reflect how individuals and house-
holds perceive the travel and destination choices
available to them (Handy and Niemeier 1997).
In urban environments the relationship between
land use and accessibility has been studied in much
more detail than in most deforestation and rural
land-use studies. Urban geographers now frequently
use space–time accessibility measures that incorporate
individual behaviour and allow individual differ-
ences and experiences to be directly reflected in
their accessibility (e.g. Dieleman et al. 2002; Dijst
et al. 2002; Kwan 1998; Weber and Kwan 2003).
Reviews of accessibility measures used in urban envir-
onments are provided by Geurs and Ritsema van Eck
(2001) and Kwan (1998). Analogous to urban studies
of accessibility, it is possible to calculate accessibility
measures for rural and natural land-use types, based
on the specific needs for managing different land-
use types, for example, based on the travel time of
the farmer to the plot for establishing a certain crop,
the amount of inputs that need to be transported
to the field, and the transport of the harvest to
either the house, a specific market or a collection
point where the produce can be sold. These require-
ments differ for different land-use types, and are often
specific for a certain region or group of people, de-
pending on the cultural background or region-specific
conditions.
This paper will derive and compare accessibility
measures for an agricultural area at the forest fringe
in the northern part of the Philippines. Simple
measures of accessibility, commonly used in land-
use and land-cover change studies, are compared
with more advanced measures that account for the
specific characteristics of different land-cover types.
The different measures are evaluated based on their
capacity to explain the spatial allocation of different
land-cover types in the area. Most land-use and
land-cover change studies using accessibility are
based on spatial data. However, the actual level at
which most decisions about land conversions are
made is the household level. Therefore, an addi-
tional analysis of the role of accessibility in land-
use decisions is made at the household level. We
will compare the results of the spatial and house-
hold analysis and discuss how these approaches
can complement each other.
Methods
Study area
The study area is situated in the northeastern part
of the island of Luzon, The Philippines (Figure 1).
The area comprises 13 villages of San Mariano
municipality, Isabela province, with a total area of
approximately 23 000 ha and is situated between
240 Accessibility at the forest fringe in the northeastern Philippines
Figure 1 Location of the study area
the town of San Mariano in the West and the
forested mountains of the Sierra Madre mountain
range in the East. The area is inhabited by approx-
imately 20 000 people (excluding San Mariano
town), belonging to various ethnic groups. A small
portion of the population belongs to the indigenous
inhabitants of the area (Kalinga and Agta), while all
others are migrants or descendents of migrants that
came to the area from the 1900s onwards. These
migrants originate from different provinces of the
northern Philippines belonging, amongst others, to
the ethnic groups Ilocano, Ibanag and Ifugao.
Between 1960 and 1990, corporate logging com-
panies deforested a large part of the area. A logging
moratorium, issued in 1989 and re-issued in 1992,
made people switch from logging-based activities
to agriculture. During the time of corporate logging
activities, accessibility to the area was relatively
good, because of the logging roads constructed by
the logging companies. Most of the current roads
still follow the former logging roads, but overall
accessibility has worsened due to the lack of
maintenance. All transport out of the area by road
or by river passes through San Mariano town,
which is the main market for selling products and
buying agricultural inputs.
Spatial data collection
Spatial data were collected during intensive field-
work in 2002 and 2003. Because the topographic
maps of the area were not updated correctly after
the initial mapping in the 1950s, all roads and a
selection of trails were mapped using GPS during an
intensive field season in 2002 and classified based
on field observations, inquiries at the municipality
office and interviews. The location of villages was
also mapped and linked to population statistics
available at the municipality. Rivers, streams and
elevation contours were digitized from the 1:50 000
topographic map published by the National
Mapping and Resource Information Authority
(NAMRIA). For this information, the topographic
maps provided accurate information which was
confirmed by field checks. Land-cover data are
interpreted from Landsat ETM+ data (http://
www.landsat.org) for June 2001 and ASTER data
for March 2002. First, unsupervised classifications
 Accessibility at the forest fringe in the northeastern Philippines 241

Figure 2 Land cover in the study area. For a colour version of this map please visit www.blackwell-synergy.com

were made from subsets of both images. Second,
the classes of the unsupervised classifications were
recoded into land-cover types according to a set of
96 training samples. Finally, the land-cover map
was constructed by combining the classifications of
the two images. In this procedure the ASTER image
was first resampled from 15 m resolution to the
same grid as the Landsat image (30 by 30 m).
Then, the land-cover classes of the two images
were put in separate layers. In a GIS, these layers
were combined, one on top of the other, in such a
way that the best land-cover classification was
established according to the training samples. For
each land-cover type, the image used was the one
that best distinguished a particular land-cover type.
The different sensors provide different spectral
information, and the images were collected in a
different stage of the growing season, which helped
to improve the contrast between different crops.
For example, the ASTER image was best able to
distinguish forested areas, so this classification was
put on top of the Landsat classification of a banana/
242 Accessibility at the forest fringe in the northeastern Philippines
secondary growth mixture that included parts of the
forested areas. Finally, the image was resampled to
a 50 by 50 m grid to match the other data. The
classes in the final land-cover map are corn (includ-
ing some other arable crops), wetland rice, banana,
grass, forest, and a class that includes secondary
forest, reforestation and residual forest (Figure 2).
The agricultural land-use types of wetland (irrigated)
rice, banana plantations and corn are found as a
long crop rotation or as permanent cultivation on
the same fields. A small area of swidden agriculture
of upland rice (mostly intercropped with banana)
is found in the eastern part of the study area.
However, because of the small extent of this land-
cover type we included it within the secondary
forest land-cover class. Secondary forests mostly
originate from regrowth after logging and can be
distinguished from the primary forest at the eastern
fringe of the study area based on canopy cover.
Classification accuracy was evaluated using an
independent sample of 76 observations from the
field. The accuracy for the classification was only
68%. This relatively low accuracy is primarily
caused by the spatial distribution of the sample
points. These were collected to serve other purposes,
and are mainly located in parts of the study area
that exhibit a complex land-cover pattern of grass,
secondary forest and small arable fields. Further-
more, some of the sample points represent small
patches of secondary vegetation that are too small
to appear on the classified image. Another reason
for classification errors is due to the difficulty of
distinguishing banana cultivation from secondary
forest or grassland with woody patches, based on
the spectral information provided by the Landsat
and ASTER sensors. All data were converted to a
rectangular grid of 50 by 50 m. This resolution
suits the data and the purpose of the analysis
well.
Household data collection
Household data were derived from an extensive
household survey conducted in 2002 (Overmars
and Verburg forthcoming). Through a combination
of stratified and systematic random sampling based
on population data, a total of 151 households was
selected, spread equally over the study area. The
survey was structured in a nested hierarchy contain-
ing information at the household level as well as at
the plot and crop level. Plot location was not
actually measured; all plot characteristics were
based on the information provided by the owner.
Accessibility was assessed by the travel time from
the residence of the household to the different plots
and the costs of transport from the residence of the
household to the market in San Mariano town.
These accessibility measures were based on the
information provided by the interviewed household
members. The cost of transport from the residence
to the market was cross-checked with other inter-
views in the same village. Based on the household
survey, and a number of additional interviews in
2003, information was obtained about yields of
agricultural crops, costs of agricultural inputs, prices
of transport, and common practice with respect to
the transport of crops and additional travel to the
market, fields and economic/social services.
Determinants of accessibility
Accessibility is often defined as the ability for inter-
action or contact with sites of economic or social
opportunity (Deichmann 1997). Therefore, different
accessibility measures can be defined for different
groups of actors based on their preferred sites and
means of economic or social opportunity and their
means of transport. For this study, we have based
the selection of destinations and transport means
on the land-use practices important in the area and
the opportunities that actors have to make best use
of the transport network.
Origins and destinations For most agricultural prac-
tices the market is an important destination, for
buying inputs such as seeds and fertilizer, for
selling agricultural products and for obtaining
credit. In the study area, San Mariano town is the
only market town. All road and river transport
out of the study area passes through this town.
From this town a good road leads to the main road
that connects Manila to the north of the country.
Other destinations of importance to agricultural
practices are the villages. Since most people live
in nucleated villages, accessibility of the agricul-
tural fields from the village is important. Further-
more, some agricultural products are transported
to the villages to be dried before they are taken
to the market. The main roads are a third destina-
tion of importance to the farmers. These roads
provide easy access to the surrounding lands, are
frequently served by public transport and agricul-
tural products are sometimes picked up along
these roads by trucks. The origins of travel for
agricultural purposes are all individual pixels in
the raster-based dataset. These are supposed to be
the locations that could have an agricultural
function, from which products are transported to
the market and to which inputs such as fertilizers
are brought.
Road network Different types of roads can be
distinguished in the study area based on their
accessibility by different transport means and
 Accessibility at the forest fringe in the northeastern Philippines 243

Table 1 Transport type and assigned travel speed to different road types for the calculation of travel time measures

Travel speed in Travel speed in

Road type Transport type dry season (km/h) wet season (km/h)

Market accessibility
Delineated path foot 2.0a 2.0a
All season 4 × 4 road 4 × 4 car or truck 7.1a 5.3
Inaccessible 4 × 4 road in the wet season foot – 3
All vehicle road all cars 14.4a 10.8
Riverbed (all rivers) foot 1.5 1.5
Off-road
0–5% slope foot 1.8b 1.8b
5–10% slope foot 1.5b 1.5b
10 –20% slope foot 0.9b 0.9b
20 –50% slope foot 0.3b 0.3b
River barrier (large rivers) foot and vehicle 0.3a 0.3a
River (large rivers) boat – 4a
Village accessibility
All road types foot 3.0
All others same as above –
Logging accessibility
All roads logging truck 7.1 –
River (large rivers) transport of logs 4 –
Paths and off-road 0.3 –

a
Calibrated by actual travel time.
b
Calibrated by travel time and path direction of delineated paths.

quality throughout the seasons. All roads and
paths were first classified into three classes based
on accessibility by (1) foot or water buffalo, (2) 4 ×
4 car or 6 × 6 truck and (3) all vehicles. Secondly,
all roads were classified based on the seasonal
aspects of accessibility into two classes: (1) all
weather roads and (2) dry weather roads. The
seasonality in road quality makes it necessary to
calculate accessibility measures for the dry and wet
seasons separately.
Means of transport The main villages that are
accessible by all vehicles are served frequently
by so-called jeepneys, lengthened jeeps used for
transporting people with shopping goods and
limited quantities of agricultural products. 6 × 6
trucks, so-called weapons carriers that can trans-
port heavy loads through sloping terrain, serve
the villages with roads that are not accessible by
other vehicles. The trucks are commonly used to
transport corn, banana and other agricultural in-
and outputs in the area, but are also used by
people for transport to the market town. In the wet
season, when some roads do not provide good
access, the products, especially banana, are also
transported by bamboo rafts on the main rivers.
Carts pulled by water buffaloes (carabaos) are
used to transport agricultural in- and outputs over
the smaller paths through the area to the fields and
over inaccessible roads during the wet season. The
capacity of these carts is limited to approx. 6–7
bags of 50 kg or 2000 bananas. Many farmers own
a buffalo; otherwise, they can hire one from one of
their neighbours when needed.
Accessibility measures
Accessibility can be measured in different units.
In this study simple distance measures, time and
monetary costs and a population potential measure
are considered. All measures were calculated with
the Costdistance algorithm of ArcGis®.
Simple distance measures Two simple accessibility
measures that are frequently used in land-use studies
are calculated for the study area. The first measure is
the simple straight-line distance to the market in San
Mariano town and the second measure is the straight-
line distance to the roads in the area identified by
the 1:50 000 topographic map. These measures can
be calculated without any further knowledge of the
study area or data collection in the study area.
244 Accessibility at the forest fringe in the northeastern Philippines
Time costs Time costs are expressed as the time it
takes to reach a destination (village, road or
market) from a location (field). Table 1 lists the
transport types and associated transport speed
assigned to the individual road types. The initial
speed assigned to the different transport types is
based on measurements in the field. In addition
to road accessibility, a slope-dependent speed was
assigned to off-road access. The delineated paths
only represent a small fraction of all paths and
trails that are found in the area. These paths
mostly avoid steep parts and the actually travelled
path is mostly longer than the straight distance
between origin and destination. The reduced speed
of off-road travel on steep slopes will emulate the
travel over the unmapped paths and trails through
the area. Furthermore, a relatively high walking
speed was assigned to all riverbeds of the small
streams in the area because of their frequent use as
transport trails through the area. Larger rivers are a
barrier to transport. Crossing is often difficult and
associated with high time cost. Therefore, a high
resistance was assigned to the big streams. In the
wet season, the same rivers are used to transport
bananas and other products on bamboo rafts. A
separate measure was calculated for wet season
transport, which includes the possibility of trans-
porting goods by river. Vehicles were assumed to
travel approximately 25% slower due to bad
weather conditions in the wet season. The final
accessibility measure for the wet season was
derived by taking the minimum value of either
road or river transport. Time costs for travel to a
village (all villages with 50 inhabitants or more) or
a main road are based on walking speed because
of the very limited use of vehicles to travel from
the agricultural fields to the farmers’ residences.
Walking on roads is assumed to be fast compared
with the walking speed on paths and off-road.
A separate accessibility measure for logging was
developed based on the common practice of (illegal)
logging in the area. Mostly, logs are pulled by a
water buffalo to the nearest (large) river that is used
to transport the logs out of the area. Often logs are
loaded on a truck at places where the river is
crossed by a road.
The initial speed assigned to the different trans-
port types on the different road types has been
calibrated using the average time cost of a number
of trips for which the travel time was measured.
Additionally, we checked if the shortest path to the
market as calculated corresponded to the shortest
route taken in practice, based on observations in
the study area. During the mapping of a number of
paths, the walking time was recorded. These times
were used to calibrate the walking speed. The paths
that were actually mapped represent just a fraction
of the total network of paths present in the area.
Paths are assumed to develop more as a function
of the terrain. Therefore, we have calibrated off-
road accessibility to represent accessibility in the
assumed presence of a network of paths. Relative
differences in off-road walking speed due to slope
were calculated by simulating the fastest route
between two locations for which the actual path
was known. The walking speeds were adapted until
the chosen pathways corresponded reasonably well
with the actually chosen pathway.
Monetary costs and relative profit The monetary costs
for travel are expressed as the costs that need to be
made to transport the agricultural output of 1 ha to
the market. Costs were calculated for each indi-
vidual pixel on the map for the two main cash
crops of the area: corn and banana. Yields, prices
and transportation practices were estimated based
on interviews with the farmers in the study area.
The harvest of both crops is mostly transported by
buffalo cart from the field to the village and trans-
ported to the market by truck. We have assumed
that the products are transported to the closest
village, rather than to the village of the farmer that
owns the land, because we lack ownership data
of all individual parcels within the study area.
Middlemen and traders often buy bananas in the
village. This does not affect the calculations because
the transportation costs are often included in the
price offered to the farmer. The transport costs for
corn are calculated as follows:
transport_cost = transport_to_village + transport_to_
market
where
transport_to_village = transport_days × carabao_price
The number of days needed to use/rent a carabao
to bring the harvest to the village is calculated by
dividing the average wet yield by the capacity of a
buffalo cart, multiplied by the travel time needed
to bring one cartload from the field to the village:
transport_days = (wet_yield/cart_capacity) ×
(travel_time/hours_per_day)
The travel time is estimated by the walking time to
the village (as estimated in the time cost measure)
corrected for the reduced speed of a fully loaded
cart. The average yield, prices and correction factors
are listed in Table 2, which is based on average
values from the results of a household survey. The
costs of transporting the yield to the market are
calculated by the number of bags of dried corn
 Accessibility at the forest fringe in the northeastern Philippines 245

Table 2 Variables used to calculate the transportation costs of corn and banana

Variable Description Value Source

Corn
yield Average dry yield 3495 kg/ ha/ harvest Data of 26 interviews
wet_yield Average wet yield 1.35 × dry_yield Calculated from interview data
carabao_price Price to rent a buffalo for one day 150 pesos Interviews
cart_capacity Capacity of one buffalo cart 6.5 bags of 55 kg Interviews/observations
travel_time Time needed to bring one cart to the field 3 × single travel on foot Observations
and back with harvest
hours_per_day Maximum number of work hours for buffalo 6 h per day Observations
Banana
yield Average yield 32 736 pieces/ ha/year Data of 20 interviews
carabao_price Price to rent a buffalo for one day 150 pesos Interviews
cart_capacity Capacity of one buffalo cart 2000 pieces Interviews/observations
travel_time Time needed to bring one cart to the field 3 × single travel Observations
and back with harvest on foot + 2 h
hours_per day Maximum number of work hours for buffalo 6 h per day Observations/interviews

harvested on 1 ha, multiplied by the costs of trans-
porting one bag to the market by truck or jeepney
for the considered village. The total transport
costs for 1 ha of corn during one year were found
by adding the transport_to_village costs and the
transport_to_market costs multiplied by cropping
intensity in the area (2 harvests/year for corn).
The costs for transporting banana are calculated
in a similar way as the cost for transporting corn.
Normally bananas are harvested approximately
every two weeks while maintenance of the planta-
tion takes place during harvesting. The time costs
for bringing the harvest to the village are therefore
increased, with a fixed amount of time to account
for maintenance and harvest. All parameters used in
the calculation are listed in Table 2. The profitability
of both corn and banana production is calculated
by subtracting the production and transport costs
from the market value of the harvested quantity.
Market value is determined by multiplying the
average yield of 1 ha in one year by the price
offered to the farmers. Production costs are based
on hired labour costs and costs of seeds and fert-
ilizer. For corn, these costs are relatively high and
also include the costs of transporting fertilizer to
the field. Banana cultivation, in the study area, is
not fertilized. After the initial investment in the
reclamation of the land and in planting the bananas,
the only costs are those for harvesting and trans-
port. Maintenance is included in these costs as it is
normally done at the same time as the harvest. The
Population potential Composite indices of access
add the utility of a destination to the weighted
distance from the destination. These models are
classically called potential models. The classic
potential model is based on the relationship of
physical objects to each other through the force
of gravity, based on distance and mass. Applied to
people and destinations, it is postulated that acces-
sibility decreases in proportion to the distance away
from a given central destination, but increases with
the size of this same facility in terms of population
(mass). In other words, the population potential
variable was created through one type of spread
(or population distribution) function that allows
population data collected at discrete locations to
be distributed across the landscape in a manner
consistent with the observed behaviour of villagers
as they move across the landscape. The area is
dominated by a nuclear settlement pattern and
characterized by daily migration to agricultural
lands for agricultural practices. Since the classical
potential model has certain drawbacks, the main
one being its steep distance decay function, alter-
native weighting functions have been suggested
(Geertman and Ritsema van Eck 1995). We have
used the Gaussian model (Ingram 1971) that has
been applied successfully in many case studies and
allows for a more gradual fall-off of the distance
decay function following:
∑ Pj ⋅ e(-d /2a )
b 2
Accessi = ij

relative profit for the cultivation of corn was calcu- j

lated by taking the ratio of the profit of respectively where Accessi represents the population potential
corn and banana cultivation for every location (grid accessibility variable, Pj the population size of the
cell) within the study area. village, dij the distance between location i and
246 Accessibility at the forest fringe in the northeastern Philippines
village j, a the distance to the point of inflection
and b the distance exponent. Often, the parameters
of the distance decay function are ‘borrowed’ from
other studies or are set at some ‘reasonable’ value
(Bigman and Deichmann 2000). The combination
of spatial data and household level data made it
possible to estimate the parameters from data
available in the household survey. Based on the
frequency distribution of the travel time between
village and agricultural plot, the distance exponent
b was set at 2, while the distance to the point of
inflection (a) was set at 45 min. The distances
between location and village were based on the
calculated travel times between all individual grid
cells and the individual villages by foot, as
described earlier. As such, this variable represents
more of an activity space of people’s movement
and impact on the land, rather than merely a
residential presence of people.
Relating accessibility to land-use characteristics
Common analysis methods such as descriptive statis-
tics, frequency distributions and ANOVA analysis
have been used to analyse the relation between
accessibility indices and land cover. In addition, an
empirical model has been estimated. For this model
we have assumed that land at a certain location is
devoted to the use that best matches the accessibility
situation at that location. This model specification
follows a commonly used approach in econometric
and geographic land-use studies (Chomitz and Gray
1996; Nelson et al. 2004; Schneider and Pontius
2001; Serneels and Lambin 2001). Multiple logistic
regression is used to estimate the coefficients of the
model as follows:
exp(α + β1X1 + ... + βnX n )
P (Y = 1 (i.e. occurrence)) =
1+ exp(α + β1X1 + ... + βnX n )
or
 P 
logit(y )
= log   = α + β1X1 + ... + βnX n
1 − P 
where α is the intercept, βn are the regression
coefficients and P is the probability of finding the
specified land-cover type at that location relative to
all other land-cover types. To estimate the relative
contribution of different variables within a model,
a standardized logistic regression coefficient was
used (Menard 1995):
* = (b YX )(S X )/ Slog
b YX 2
it (1 ) / R
2
= (b YX )(S X )R / Slogit(1 )
where b YX* is the standardized logistic regression
coefficient, bYX is the unstandardized regression
coefficient, sX is the standard deviation of the
2
independent variable X, Slogit(1 ) is the variance of
logit(Y), Slogit(1 ) is the standard deviation of logit(Y),
and R2 is the coefficient of determination.
In OLS regression, the coefficient of determin-
ation, R2, is often used to indicate goodness of fit. In
multiple logistic regression this coefficient cannot
be applied. There are pseudo-R2 measures avail-
able for logistic regression, but those can only be
used to compare different specifications of the same
model and cannot be used to compare different
models. Therefore, the ROC (receiver operating
characteristic) (Swets 1986) was used to indicate the
goodness of fit of the models. The ROC summarizes
the performance of a logistic regression model over
a range of cut-off values by classifying the prob-
abilities. The value of the ROC is defined as the
area under the curve linking the relation between the
proportion of true positives versus the proportion
of false positives for an infinite number of cut-off
values. The ROC statistic varies between 0.5
(completely random) and 1 (perfect discrimination).
The research area contains 99 863 grid cells for
which land cover was classified. At present there
are no models and test statistics available which
account for substantive spatial interaction in logis-
tic models (Munroe et al. 2001). To compensate for
potential spatial dependence in the dependent
variables, a random selection of 20% of the obser-
vations was used to minimize the effects of
neighbouring land-cover types. This sampling
procedure allows us to apply standard estimation
techniques (Anselin 2002).
Results
Accessibility measures
Figure 3 shows the spatial pattern of four of the
calculated accessibility measures, the simple dis-
tance to the market, the travel time to the market,
a specific measure that provides an index of the
time cost to transport logs to San Mariano and
the population potential. The northwestern part of
the study area is located a short distance from the
market, and roads and villages are always close.
The dense road network of relatively high quality
in this part of the area causes the travel time to
increase only slowly as the distance to San Mariano
increases. Near to the forest fringe, time costs increase
much faster due to the absence of roads and
increasing slopes that cause large time costs due to
slow speeds and detours. The time cost of travel-
ling from San Mariano to San Jose and Del Pilar is
respectively 2 h and 2 h and 15 min (see Figure 2
for the location of these villages). To reach the
eastern boundary of the study area takes between
 Accessibility at the forest fringe in the northeastern Philippines 247

Figure 3 Accessibility measures for the study area based on the straight-line distance to the market, the travel time to the
market in the dry season, a travel time measure for logging and the population potential. Darker shadings indicate
longer distances and travel times or higher population potential

5 and 9 h. Logging accessibility shows a similar
pattern to road accessibility, except for the influ-
ence of the rivers that are frequently used for the
transport of illegally logged wood.
For the main cash crops in the area, corn and
banana, transport costs and net profit were calcu-
lated for each location. Figure 4 shows the spatial
distribution of the ratio between the net profit of
corn and the net profit of banana. Except for a
small area very near to San Mariano town, the
estimated net profit of banana is higher for the whole
area. This could be attributed to the relatively high
selling prices used for banana. These prices are
only valid for one of the banana species grown
in the area. For other species, lower prices are
obtained. From the map it can be seen that the
relative profitability of growing corn is highest near
San Mariano. In the immediate neighbourhood of
the villages in the area, the profitability of growing
corn is relatively high due to the high costs of
bringing the harvest to the village for drying before
the harvest is brought to the market. Corn cultivation
turns out to be more profitable around San Jose
compared with the area around Del Pilar, even
though both are located at approximately the same
travel time from the market. This is due to the
relatively high transport costs charged for the San
Mariano–Del Pilar trip by trucks and jeepneys.
248 Accessibility at the forest fringe in the northeastern Philippines

Figure 4 Ratio between the net profit of corn cultivation and banana cultivation for each pixel within the study area based on
differences in transportation cost of agricultural inputs and outputs. Higher values indicate a relatively larger profit for corn
cultivation relative to banana cultivation

5-min intervals of the travel time to the market.

Relation between land cover and accessibility
The relation between land cover and accessibility
was studied for the different accessibility measures.
In this section we discuss the results for the individ-
ual measures while the following section presents a
comparison of the measures. Frequency diagrams
for the occurrence of the different land-cover types
within a 50 by 50 m grid cell were calculated for
Figure 5 shows a clear pattern: corn is cultivated
closest to the market, while banana cultivation takes
place at a longer travel time from the market. At
2.5 h travel time from the market, the first occur-
rences of secondary forest are found, while primary
forest is only found at least 4 h from the market.
Rice does not fit as neatly into this pattern as the
other land-cover types. A large portion of the rice
 Accessibility at the forest fringe in the northeastern Philippines 249

Figure 5 Cumulative frequency of occurrence of different land-cover types as a function of the travel time to the market

Table 3 Binary logit estimates for land use distributions as a function of travel time measures expressed in minutes

Corn Banana Wetland rice

Accessibility b b* b b* b b*

Market (dry) −0.0095* −0.148 −0.0025* −0.109 0.0079* 0.025

Village −0.0220* −0.282 −0.0028* −0.104 −0.0269* −0.069
Road − −0.0009 −0.027 −0.0238* −0.050
Constant 1.6185* 0.0001* −3.2384*
ROC 0.82 0.58 0.77

Secondary forest Forest

Accessibility b b* b b*

Market (dry) 0.0196* 0.508 0.0133* 0.333

Village −0.0182* −0.391 0.0182* 0.265
Logging access 0.0017* 0.115 0.0020* 0.130
Constant −4.3796* −7.1037*
ROC 0.82 0.96

*Significant at the 0.05 level.

fields are found around 2 h travel time from the the agricultural crops, market accessibility, village
market, where a number of villages are situated. accessibility and road accessibility were included in
Multiple logistic regression models were fitted that the model. For the two forest types, market, village
combine the travel time indices in one model. For and the specific index for logging accessibility were
250 Accessibility at the forest fringe in the northeastern Philippines

Figure 6 Scatter plot of the straight-line distance to the market versus the travel time to the market in both the dry
and wet season based on a random sample of pixels

included. The resulting parameter estimates are
shown in Table 3. Model fits are good for all land-
cover types except for banana cultivation. Clearly,
accessibility is not a major determinant in the
decision to cultivate banana. Overmars and Verburg
(forthcoming) have shown that banana cultivation
mainly takes place in the steeply sloping areas, not
suitable for other agricultural uses. The agricultural
land-cover types all have negative coefficients for
the accessibility measures: the longer the travel time
from the village, market or road, the less likely that
these crops are grown. Only wetland rice cultivation
is slightly positively related to the travel time to the
market. In the study area, wetland rice is grown
mostly as a subsistence crop. Therefore, the travel
time to the market is largely irrelevant to wetland
rice cultivation. Because of the high maintenance
requirements, easy access from the village or road
is of importance, which is identified by the regres-
sion coefficients. The standardized beta coefficients
indicate the relative importance of the independent
variables. Even for corn, a typical cash crop, the
distance to the village is more important than the
distance to the market. The time cost of travelling
between home and field is clearly more important
to the farmer in land-use decision making than the
time costs to the market. This can be explained by
the high frequency of home to field travel compared
with the limited number of times that the farmer
has to travel to the market town. The regression for
forest has positive coefficients for all accessibility
measures, meaning that the least accessible places
still remain under forest. Secondary forest is also
found at the locations that do not have good logging
and market access. However, the coefficient for
village accessibility is negative, distinguishing the
primary forests at very inaccessible places from
the secondary forests at places with more human
influence.
In addition to the travel times calculated for the
dry season, a separate travel time measure was
calculated for the wet season. Figure 6 shows the
market accessibility in both dry and wet seasons
compared with the straight-line distance. Differences
are small close to the market, since all roads in this
area are accessible throughout the year. Further
from the market, the differences between dry and
wet season accessibility increase. The area accessible
within 3 h of the market is much smaller in the wet
season than in the dry season. Particularly in the
 Accessibility at the forest fringe in the northeastern Philippines 251

Figure 7 Frequency distribution of corn and banana cultivation as a function of the ratio between the profit of corn
and banana cultivation

Table 4 ROC values of multiple logistic regression models based on different accessibility measures

Combined time measures Transport cost Population Simple

Land-use type (market, village, road) (min) measures (pesos) potential measure measures (m)

Wetland rice 0.77 – 0.70 0.75

Corn 0.82 0.80 0.81 0.75
Banana 0.58 0.57 0.57 0.63
Secondary forest 0.82 – 0.74 0.76
Forest 0.96 – 0.96 0.96

central part of the study area, many roads are
inaccessible during the wet season. The influence
of seasonality in accessibility on land-use decisions
was assessed by relating the corn and banana
distribution to both the dry season and wet season
accessibility. The ROC values were similar for both
seasons. Including both the dry and wet season
accessibility variables as independent factors,
however, hardly increased the level of explanation.
It could have been expected that wet season acces-
sibility would have limited the possibilities for
certain land-use types. However, even in the wet
season, large trucks that are commonly used to
transport agricultural inputs and outputs can still
reach most villages. Furthermore, the differences
between wet and dry season accessibility are rela-
tively small in the northwestern part of the area,
which is the main agricultural area.
For the two main cash crops in the area, corn and
banana, frequency distributions were calculated
for the occurrence of these two crops as a function
of their relative profit (Figure 7). Corn is most
frequently grown in the area where it is most
profitable. However, the frequency diagram shows
that for a wide range of the relative profitability,
both crops are found at the same time.
Comparison of accessibility measures
The different accessibility measures calculated in this
study were compared in relation to their capacity
to explain the land-cover pattern. Multiple logistic
regression between the measures and the location
of the relevant land-cover types was used while ROC
values are provided to compare the performance of
the regression models (Table 4). The travel time and
252 Accessibility at the forest fringe in the northeastern Philippines
Table 5 Travel time to village and transport cost from village to the market for three land-use types based on
household level data and spatial data
Household data
Travel time Transport cost
from field to from village to
Crop N village (min) market (pesos)a
Wetland rice 42 17.9 (17.0) 27.4 (11.6)
Corn 199 21.8 (32.5) 18.9 (10.4)
Banana 85 31.9 (36.3) 21.6 (10.1)
a
Transport costs are expressed in pesos charged for each person, bag of 50 kg or appox. 500 bananas by jeepney or truck.
travel cost measures generally have a stronger rela-
tion to land cover than the simple measures. Only
for banana did the simple measures perform slightly
better, but overall explanation remained low.
Comparison with household data
The relation between crop choice and accessibility
was also determined based on household level data.
Both the average travel time from the permanent
house of the household to the agricultural plot, as
well as the transport costs from the permanent
house to the market, were analysed. Table 5 gives
the results for the three main agricultural crops.
Pixel-level results of the spatial analysis are given
for comparison. The results from household data
are similar to the spatial analysis. Wetland rice is
preferably cultivated close to the villages, but mostly
in villages further from the market. The areas close
to the market and at a close distance to the village
are also preferably used for corn cultivation, and
the least accessible agricultural fields are used for
banana cultivation. The differences in mean values
are significant except for the travel time from field to
village based on the household data. The absolute
values of both travel time and travel costs are
different for household level data and spatial data.
This can be caused by incorrectly calculated travel
times. However, this can also be a result of the
sampling of households over the area and a number
of scale dependencies discussed in more detail by
Overmars and Verburg (forthcoming).
Discussion
The case study confirms the importance of accessi-
bility as a determinant of land-cover patterns. The
results indicate that accessibility does have a major
effect on the location of most land-cover types,
which is consistent with most of the literature
Spatial data
Travel time Transport cost from
from field to the closest village to
N village (min) the market (pesos)a
1490 26.7 (20.4) 25.6 (9.9)
22 173 30.6 (27.7) 21.3 (9.0)
23 251 48.3 (31.3) 23.8 (8 8)
referred to in the introduction of this paper. Further-
more, different measures of accessibility are import-
ant to different land-cover types as a result of the
differences in management, marketing strategy and
requirements of the different land uses. This study
therefore confirms the importance of land-use type
specific accessibility measures. This conclusion
indicates that researchers should pay more attention
to the development and selection of appropriate
accessibility measures in land-use change studies,
similar to the approaches followed in urban acces-
sibility analysis (Kwan 1998; Geurs and Ritsema
van Eck 2001). Instead of simple ‘distance to road/
market’ measures, a range of other accessibility
indices can be used, each of which might reflect
different dimensions of the accessibility experience
of individuals related to their specific land-use
activities.
For most land-cover types addressed in this study,
accessibility explains a relatively large part of the
spatial variation in land cover. The effects of acces-
sibility could be overestimated due to the correla-
tions of the infrastructure with other variables, such
as population and geomorphology. Especially for
the population potential and village accessibility
indices, it is impossible to separate the effect of
population pressure and accessibility. Topography
and road location are often related; the effects of
topography can therefore be attributed, incorrectly,
to accessibility. If roads are preferentially routed
through agriculturally suitable areas, and if some
aspects of suitability are not observed, then the
model may also overestimate the effect of accessi-
bility. However, the roads in the study area are
mostly upgraded logging roads constructed to provide
access to the whole area for logging operations.
Therefore, there is little correlation between the
location of the roads, the topography and the
location of agricultural areas, reducing the risk for
overestimating the effect of accessibility.
 Accessibility at the forest fringe in the northeastern Philippines
It is often argued that road building is likely to
increase the threat of encroachment in forest areas.
In the study area, an improvement in the current
road network will most likely lead to a larger share
of corn cultivation instead of further deforestation.
Both the travel time and travel costs now constrain
the cultivation of corn and less intensive crops are
grown in the less accessible areas. The current
forest frontier is located far from the market and
the villages as a consequence of former corporate
logging activities (van den Top 1998). Corn cultiva-
tion at such a distance from the market is not
profitable. However, road extension towards the
forest frontier and migration might lead to the
establishment of new villages near the forest frontier.
These conditions could result in increased deforesta-
tion for agricultural purposes.
In this study, different indicators for the accessibil-
ity are used, ranging from simple distances to roads
and markets, based on easily available topographic
maps, to composite measures of the transport
costs and population potential. Although composite
indicators are extremely useful as overall market
access measures for ordinal comparisons, their lack
of real-world units makes them difficult to interpret.
Geertman and Ritsema van Eck (1995) point out
that a potential accessibility numerical value is not
easily interpreted in terms relating to geographic
reality. Different values can tell us if one point
has greater accessibility potential than another,
but nothing in terms of actual scale. Interpretation
becomes especially problematic when access
measures are combined with other variables in
household-level analysis. The population potential
measure used in this study combines the activity
range of individuals based on household data with
the actual infrastructure into a measure of land-use
pressure. Although this measure is directly related
to individual behaviour, it cannot be linked to
measures at the household level because the actual
indicator is a dimensionless quantity. Furthermore,
the activity range of people is a function of popula-
tion pressure and can change in the future. In
unravelling the causal relations underlying decisions
in land-use change, it is necessary to represent
the accessibility situation in a way similar to the
perception of the farmers. In the study area, the
actors certainly do not perceive accessibility in
terms of distance in kilometres, but much more in
terms of travel time and costs made to transport
agricultural products to the market. Therefore, it is
not surprising that these measures are more useful
in explaining the land-cover distribution.
Transport cost measures and the analysis of the
relative profitability of different land uses, as used
in this study, link up with the economic theory of
von Thünen and are capable of explaining a
253
relatively large part of the spatial distribution of
corn cultivation in the study area, while the relative
profitability explains part of the differences in
distribution between corn and banana. However,
the use of transport cost measures has some draw-
backs. The calculation of a reasonable estimate for
the transport costs requires insights into the trans-
portation practices and information on prices,
harvests and transport capacity. Furthermore, the
calculation of transport costs is only relevant for
marketable crops. Finally, the decision to cultivate
subsistence crops is not often based on the potential
monetary profit, but rather based on food security
considerations. People do not always optimize
monetary profit, as many other considerations are
important for their decisions (Rabin 1998). A better
approach to defining accessibility indicators is
therefore based on a firm understanding of the
behavioural responses to the spatial separation of
locations of supply to the locations of demand
(Kwan et al. 2003). The approach taken in this
paper, which empirically estimates the relation
between land use and the travel time to different
destinations, could be used to overcome the diffi-
culties in quantifying this understanding of the
behavioural response. The empirical results indicate
the relative importance of the different destinations
based on perception, travel costs and other consid-
erations made. The relative importance of village
accessibility, as compared with market accessibility,
is a result that could not be derived from economic
considerations, but corresponds with our under-
standing of the people’s perception of accessibility
in the area. In the comparison of measures, the
combination of travel time measures produces the
best explanation of land-cover patterns. A similar
finding was made by de Wolff et al. (forthcoming)
and Staal et al. (2002), who found that relatively
simple accessibility measures performed better in a
case study of milk prices in small-holder dairy
systems in Kenya. Nelson and Hellerstein (1997)
compared the performance of a least cost travel time
index to roads and villages with simple Euclidian
distances to these locations on deforestation in
central Mexico. This study found a slightly better
performance for travel time indices compared with
the Euclidian distances.
Another advantage of using travel times as a
measure of accessibility is the easy comparison with
household level data. In household studies, acces-
sibility is often measured as the travel time to
different destinations in the same units as spatial
travel time measures. The comparison of spatial
accessibility measures and household-level accessi-
bility data can serve as a validation of the spatial
analysis. Although scale dependencies and sampling
effect might hamper such a validation, the general
254 Accessibility at the forest fringe in the northeastern Philippines
relation between land use and accessibility should
be the same. For the study area considered in this
paper, very similar conclusions could be derived
from household level data and the spatial measures.
This comparison of household and spatial data also
helps us to certify the causality of the observed
relations and to interpret the spatial correlations.
Furthermore, the household-level study was used to
define accessibility measures that specifically relate
to the activity of the agents in the area, the available
transport options, and characteristics of the cropping
system. As such, the combined household and
spatial analysis of accessibility strengthens our
capacities to understand, explain and ultimately
forecast land-use change. This contributes to the
integration of the social and spatial sciences in
land-use research, referred to as ‘socializing the
pixel’ and ‘pixelizing the social’ (Geoghegan et al.
1998; Rindfuss et al. 2002).
Acknowledgement
The work presented in this paper was funded by
the Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical
Research (WORTRO) of the Netherlands Organiza-
tion for Scientific Research (NWO).
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