## 2 Materials and Methods  
### Description of Study Area  
The Dedza and Ntcheu districts are in Central Malawi and adjacent; however simultaneous socio-environmental factors impact their land-cover change trajectories differently justifying the choice of the two districts for this study (see Figure 1). The Dedza district is larger in area, population size and density, is more mountainous and has a larger share of forest cover, protected forests (reserves in the west, center, and eastern side), and agricultural land use (nearly half of total area); whereas Ntcheu has a more heterogeneous landscape, larger mean farm sizes, and a population that grew faster than Dedza, and had a different set of major project interventions. Additionally, the two districts were chosen because they were also part of an agriculture research project funded under the Feed the Future initiative of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to improve food productivity in maize-mixed farming systems. The primary goal of this project, the Africa Research in Sustainable Intensification for the Next Generation (Africa RISING), was to improve food productivity in maize-mixed farming systems. This project had built a research infrastructure, local knowledge, and data and information that helped to contextualize our study and was a  
Figure 1: Study Area of two districts located in Central Malawi. The Dedza district is the upper study area while The Ntcheu district is the lower area. The figure also shows the boundaries of four agriculture extension administrative areas called Extension Planning Areas (EPA) and ground-truth field observations locations. factor in the choice of study districts. Further, although the two districts were similar in an aggregate sense, the four study site communities (Linthipe and Golomoti in Dedza, and Kandeu and Nispe, in Ntcheu district) were selected under the (Africa RISING) project to maximize both intra- and cross-district variability. The Dedza district is located approximately 50 miles southeast of Malawi's capital city, Lilongwe. Population statistics from the Malawi National Statistical Office (NSO) show that in 2019 the population of Dedza, a district of 3754 square kilometers (km\({}^{2}\)) in area, was approximately 840,000, indicating a density of 221 persons per km\({}^{2}\). The region has experienced high annual population growth of 2.8% from 2008 to 2018 [40] partially attributed to an influx of refugees from Mozambique beginning in the mid-1980s, some of whom remained [41]. Dedza comprises smallholder farmers practicing cereal-legume systems consisting mostly of maize, common bean, cassava, millet, rice, sorghum, and tubers (sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes) [40]. Some farmers keep goats, pigs, and poultry [42]. Dedza has a relatively high elevation ranging from 500 m to 1600 m, a mean annual temperature of 18 \({}^{\circ}\)C, and mean annual precipitation of 896 mm [40]. The Ntcheu district has a lower population of 660,000, and although its population grew faster than Dedza's (3.1% annually between 2008 and 2018), its population density was lower at 203 persons per km\({}^{2}\) on a smaller land area of 3251 km\({}^{2}\)[40]. The district is like Dedza but has a greater variety of integrated crop-livestock systems [42]. Many families also depend on the land for cultivation, livestock grazing, firewood collection and charcoal production. Ntcheu's elevation range is like Dedza's, 550 m to 1500 m. The mean temperature and precipitation are like Dedza's. Both districts have moderately developed trading centers and a few paved roads (routes M1, M5, M10) connecting each district to the capital city of Lilongwe; however, most farming communities are located in more rural settings. Locally, farmers own or rent one or multiple fields that on average range from 0.58 to 0.91 hectares; however, Ntcheu's farm sizes are larger than in Dedza (Malawi, National Statistical Office) [40].