Hum Ecol (2010) 38:675–690 on local ecological and socioeconomic characteristics. Although analysis of the in-depth interviews and the survey data suggested that rural labor migration led to a decline in cultivated farmland area and some land improvement in the study villages, systematic biophysical assessment is still needed for a more complete understanding of actual changes in land resource conditions. Next, while uses of traditional and modern agricultural technologies were not statistically significant in distinguish- ing between rural labor-migrant and non-labor-migrant households, discriminant analysis showed that labor- migrant households tended to spend less on agricultural chemicals than farming households. While this finding appears to contradict the New Economics of Labor Migration proposition that migration income is used to compensate for labor shortfalls and make agricultural improvement (Stark 1991; Taylor 1999), it is not surprising given the low returns of smallholder farming and the devaluation of agriculture in rural migrant households’ diversified livelihood strategies. Since overfertilization and runoff are a major contributing factor to nonpoint source pollution in rural China, the reduction of chemical use by labor-migrant households may mitigate agricultural produc- tion pollution to some extent. Finally, the results of both bivariate and multivariate analyses show that labor migration leads to reduced household dependence on forest resources for fuel, which should contribute to better land and forest conservation as firewood collection is a major cause of soil erosion and deforestation in rural areas of developing countries.7 Detailed comments of older informants about the changes in forest cover around the study communities suggest an emerging trend of forest recovery. As one resident from Dacao Village said: When the farmland was contracted to individual house- holds in 1981, these hills were almost bald. There was nothing on them. Now things are getting better. They are nearly all covered by trees. The mountain forests have been restored. The forests are so thick that people even can’t go inside them. Findings from the household survey and key informant interviews provide some support for the forest transition theory—a long-term sequence from initial deforestation due to human settlement to eventual forest recovery (Mather 1992). Rudel et al. (2005) identified two major pathways of forest recovery after agricultural expansion ends: (1) economic development and (2) forest scarcity. In the first, 7 Key informant interviews also suggested that the difference in firewood use among labor-migrant, local off-farm work, and farming household groups would be even more salient due to the recent sharp increase in coal prices. 687 urbanization and economic development lead farmers to leave rural areas for better paying non-agricultural jobs. Labor loss increases farm worker wages in rural origin areas, which makes agricultural production even less profitable. Marginal farm lands are then abandoned and eventually return to forests. In the second case, increasing deforestation raises the prices of forest products, which in turn drives the trend of reforestation. States are usually critical actors in this type of forest recovery because they create forestation programs in response to forest scarcities. Rudel et al. (2005) assigned China to the “forest scarcity” category. However, this study shows that the case of rural Chongqing also fits well with the “economic development and labor migration” path. The proportion of forested land in Chongqing declined from 19% in the early 1950s to less than 10% in the 1960s and 1970s, but has maintained a constant increase since the 1980s and reached 34% in 2008 (Chongqing Bureau of Statistics 2009). Although the bulk of this substantial increase in Chongqing’s forest cover is due to government-organized tree plantations and the Grain for Green Program, this analysis suggests an association between rural labor out-migration and ongoing forest recovery in the study area. Conclusions and Implications In this study, rural household livelihoods were conceptualized as an integrative mediating factor in a conceptual framework of rural migration and the rural environment. Findings based on the rural household survey data and key informant interviews confirm the research hypothesis that labor- migrant and non-labor-migrant households are significantly different in rural livelihood activities. Results show that labor- migrant households farm less intensively, have higher rural cash income, own more consumer assets, and depend less on biophysical resources for fuel than non-labor-migrant house- holds. Moreover, rural non-labor-migrant households are an internally diverse rather than a homogenous group. Labor- migrant households differed particularly from farming house- holds in livelihood activities, while sharing many similar livelihood characteristics with local off-farm work house- holds. These findings have implications for rural environmental management and development policymaking and for future research. The general support found in the analysis for the conceptual model demonstrates its efficacy in improving our understanding of the environmental impacts of rural migration. The ultimate environmental consequences of labor out-migration in rural origin areas are contingent on the resulting changes in rural household livelihoods. The mediating livelihood variables between rural migration and the rural environment highlight potential areas for policy