(3) The availability of natural forest resources: There are
two competing hypotheses about the relationship
between the availability of natural forest resources
and the density of trees in fields. Vityakon et al.
(1996) reported that villages which have easy access
to nearby forests retained more trees in paddy fields
than villages located farther away from forests. This
is presumably because the villagers can easily collect
timber and firewood from the forest, so do not need to
exploit the trees in their paddy fields as heavily as
they would if the forest was less accessible to them.
However, Kosaka et al. (2006) reported the opposite
finding from Central Laos where tree density was
much higher in a village without a nearby forest than
in a village with an easily accessible adjacent forest,
presumably because the villagers with access to
abundant forest resources felt no need to conserve
trees in their own fields.