An Assessment of Health and Sustainability of a Smallholder-Dominated Tropical Highlands Ecosystem - Integrated Assessment of Health and Sustainability of Agroecosystems - page 190

1

13a
14a

8a

11a

9b
12b

3b

3a

0

4b

5b

5a

6a

1b

1a

2b

2 9a

6b

12a

-1

4a

-1 0 1

Dim 23

fIGuRe 7.8 Scatterplot of dimension 3 against dimension 23 showing change in inertia of
categories between January 1999 and January 2000. See CD for color image and key.

expected outputs were an improvement in human health and in incomes. However,
increases in crop diseases were foreseen, with these eventually leading to negative
impacts in terms of agrochemical use.

7.4 dIscussIon
With only two rounds of measurements over a 2-year period, it is difficult to assess
the agroecosystem based on the trends in the indicators. Further measurements
would be required to provide a more valid assessment of health and sustainability.
However, the methods used in this study demonstrate an approach that may be useful
in summarizing and presenting indicator data. The advantages of correspondence
analysis are twofold: (1) the incorporation of targets and thresholds in the process
of categorizing the indicators, thus providing an intuitive interpretation, and (2) pro-
jection of data from the initial and subsequent measurements into a multidimen-
sional space, with the distribution of points easily interpretable in terms of the χ 2
distribution.

7.4.1 s p A t i A l A n D t e m p o r A l t r e n D s i n t h e i n D i C A t of r is
Simple correspondence analysis grouped villages based on two main criteria: the
crop production characteristic and water availability patterns. This is in agreement
with the data from the participatory process, in which water was identified as an
important constraint and cash crop production as an important source of household
income and a determinant of land use in the district.
Spatial trends were confounded by the changes in response rates for many indi-
cators and possible interviewer bias. The response rate was increased for many
of the indicators between the first and the second measurements. This is more
likely due to the feedback provided to the communities subsequent to the first