Abstract
The Tehuacán-Cuicatlán Valley, Mexico, is the semiarid region with the richest biodiversity of North America and was recently recognized as a UNESCO's World Heritage site. Original agricultural practices remain to this day in agroforestry systems (AFS), which are expressions of high biocultural diversity. However, local people and researchers perceive a progressive decline both in natural ecosystems and AFS. To assess changes in location and extent of agricultural land use, we carried out a visual interpretation of very-high resolution imagery and field work, through which we identified AFS and conventional agricultural systems (CAS) from 1995 to 2003 and 2012. We analyzed five communities, representative of three main ecological and agricultural zones of the region. We assessed agricultural land use changes in relation to conspicuous landscape features (relief, rivers, roads, and human settlements). We found that natural ecosystems cover more than 85% of the territory in each community, and AFS represent 51% of all agricultural land. Establishment and permanence of agricultural lands were strongly influenced by gentle slopes and the existence of roads. Contrary to what we expected, we recorded agricultural areas being abandoned, thus favoring the regeneration of natural ecosystems, as well as a 9% increase of AFS over CAS. Agriculture is concentrated near human settlements. Most of the studied territories are meant to preserve natural ecosystems, and traditional AFS practices are being recovered for biocultural conservation.
Highlights
Agriculture has been one of the main causes of changes in land use and land cover throughout the world’s history
Distribution of the Agricultural Land Use. The percentage of their corresponding territory dedicated to any agricultural system was low in comparison with natural ecosystems extension
Agricultural land use cover was present in only 5% of the analyzed territories, while conserved natural ecosystems cover on average 86% of those territories (Figure 4)
Summary
Agriculture has been one of the main causes of changes in land use and land cover throughout the world’s history. Since the 1990s, agroecologists have recognized the ecological and social importance of agroforestry systems (AFS) as a potential alternative for sustainable production of food and other raw materials, and for conservation of biodiversity and ecosystems processes [3,5,6]. They are important reservoirs of biocultural diversity, where traditional ecological knowledge is constructed, management practices have been tested, and domestication of plants and animals have been conducted [4,11,12,13]
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