Abstract

It is not clear whether any particular type of forest land ownership is better than another regarding the quality of natural resource management. However, some researchers have found that communal ownership is efficient for this purpose, providing all members agree to establish operational rules and apply these in an atmosphere of cordiality and respect. In Mexico, 26% of the forests are privately owned, 4% are publicly owned and the remaining 70% are owned and managed by rural communities known as Ejidos and Comunidades. Studies of how forests and forest management may differ in relation to the type of land ownership in Mexico are scarce. Research on differences in tree species diversity in Mexican forests is desirable because species diversity is an important index in community ecology and may be affected by forest management. Moreover, tree species diversity is used as a biodiversity indicator in various monitoring schemes for sustainable forest management. In order to help resolve the lack of information regarding possible differences in forest management in relation to land ownership type in Mexico, the objectives of this study were as follows: (1) to identify groups of climatic, physiographical and social conditions that are almost homogeneous but widely separated from each other, and (2) to determine whether the type of forest land ownership affects tree species diversity within each group. Vegetation-related data on 1592 plots in a forest area of about 6.33 million hectares were obtained from the Mexican National Forest and Soil Inventory. We used k-means clustering algorithms and the Affinity Propagation clustering, in an attempt to compare tree species diversity in communally and privately owned land. Finally, we used the Kruskal–Wallis rank sum test and a permutation test to compare the mean values of the tree species diversity in each cluster of similar, special conditions identified.There were no significant differences in the mean values of tree species diversity between the two types of forest land ownership. Thus, the study findings did not support the hypothesis that tree species diversity tends to be higher in communally owned forests than in the privately owned forests in the study area. Future research is needed to address the following: (1) the effect of land ownership regime on forest fragmentation, (2) agreements among diverse stakeholders about the type of benefits derived, and (3) improvement of public policies aimed at cost-effective sustainable forest management, considering land ownership.

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