Deforestation in the southern Yucatan peninsular region: an integrative approach

The tensions between development and preservation of tropical forests heighten the need for integrated assessments of deforestation processes and for models that address the fine-tuned location of change. As Mexico's last tropical forest frontier, the southern Yucatan peninsular region witnesses these tensions, giving rise to a "hot spot" of tropical deforestation. These forests register the imprint of ancient Maya uses and selective logging in the recent past, but significant modern conversion of them for agriculture began in the 1960s. Subsequently, as much as 10% of the region's forests have been disturbed anthropogenically. The precise rates of conversion and length of successional growth in both upland and wetland forests are tied to policy and political economic conditions. Pressures on upland forests are exacerbated by the development of infrastructure for El Mundo Maya, an archaeological and ecological activity predicated on forest maintenance, and by increased subsistence and market cultivation, including lands on the edge of Mexico's largest tropical forest biosphere reserve. In this complex setting, the southern Yucatan peninsular region project seeks to unite research in the ecological, social, and remote sensing sciences to provide a firm understanding of the dynamics of deforestation and to work towards spatially explicit assessments and models that can be used to monitor and project forest change under different assumptions. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V All rights reserved.