Table 3.

Rates of forest clearing and comparison of landscape-change metrics for primary forest between colonist sectors and indigenous community territories, 1986–1996 and 1996–2002 (SD).

Metric*	1986–1996			1996–2002
	colonist	indigenous	p	colonist	indigenous	comparison
Deforestation rate (%/year)	3.93 (1.65)	1.67 (1.41)	<0.001	4.16 (3.51)	0.73 (1.87)	<0.001
Primary forest (%)	−24.42 (7.65)	−13.26 (10.33)	<0.001	−9.47 (5.34)	−2.40 (7.32)	<0.001
Patch density (patches/100 ha)	9.62 (5.21)	3.35 (3.92)	<0.001	0.92 (3.84)	1.89 (2.66)
Largest patch index (%)	−33.63 (17.43)	−14.37 (13.27)	<0.001	−8.79 (8.63)	−2.37 (7.67)	<0.01
Cohesion (0–100)	−0.09 (0.20)	−0.12 (0.14)		0.08 (0.04)	0.11 (0.09)	<0.001
Aggregation index (0–100)	−1.71 (1.87)	−0.18 (0.34)	<0.001	−1.82 (2.60)	−0.17 (0.37)	<0.05

^*This table shows the mean annual rate of deforestation for colonist farms and indigenous territories in the two study samples and measures of change in primary forest as captured by changes in the pattern metrics within the two time periods. Definitions: primary forest, proportion of the landscape covered by primary forest; patch density, indicator of fragmentation measured as the number of primary forest patches per 100 ha; largest patch index, percentage of overall area constituted by the largest forested patch; cohesion, measure of the physical connectedness among patches of primary forest (almost zero when proportion of area covered by primary forest is maximally subdivided and increases up to 100 as forest connectedness increases); aggregation index, measure of spatial aggregation or dispersion of forested patches (zero when the patch types are maximally disaggregated [i.e., there are no adjacent primary forest patches] and 100 when the landscape is contiguous).