Abstract
An unprecedented magnitude of land-use/land-cover changes have led to a rapid conversion of tropical forested landscapes to different land-uses. This comparative study evaluates and reconstructs the recent history (1976–2019) of land-use change and the associated land-use types that have emerged over time in two neighboring rural villages in Southern Mexico. Qualitative ethnographic and oral histories research and quantitative land-use change analysis using remote sensing were used. Findings indicate that several interacting historical social-ecological drivers (e.g., colonization program, soil quality, land conflicts with indigenous people, land-tenure, availability of surrounding land where to expand, Guatemala’s civil war, several agricultural development and conservation programs, regional wildfire, Zapatista uprising, and highway construction) have influenced each village’s own unique land-use change history and landscape composition: the smaller village is characterized by a dominating pasture landscape with some scattered agricultural and forest areas, while the larger village has large conserved forest areas intermixed with pastures, agriculture, oil palm and rubber plantations. The differential histories of each village have also had livelihood diversification implications. It is suggested that landscape history research in tropical agroforest frontiers is necessary because it can inform land-use policies and forest conservation strategies that are compatible with local livelihoods and conservation goals.
Highlights
Introduction published maps and institutional affilLand-use and land-cover changes have affected around a third of the world’s surface, an unprecedented magnitude in just six decades [1]
Land ownership per household increased from approximately 20 ha to around 30–150 ha, depending on how many ejidatarios were in the household
The findings illustrate how forest conversion and land-use change in the study area has been the result of historical factors involving complex social, political, institutional, economic and ecological processes, such as: a colonization program, soil quality, land-tenure security, land conflicts with the Lacandón indigenous people, availability of surrounding land where to expand and land extensions, an ejidos’ union, the civil war in Guatemala, several agricultural development programs, the Zapatista uprising, a regional wildfire, the construction of the highway, and forest conservation programs, among other factors
Summary
Land-use and land-cover changes have affected around a third of the world’s surface, an unprecedented magnitude in just six decades [1]. Since the 1960s there has been a rapid conversion of tropical landscapes to different land uses—often with adverse effects on ecosystem services, such as biodiversity and climate, and on local people’s livelihoods and well-being [2]. Knowledge production on the causes of local land-use change and its links to global/regional contexts is, needed for policy and decision-making at different scales [3,4]. Land-use/land-cover changes, and landscape transformation, can be addressed from the field of environmental history that analyzes environmental change by studying human-environment interactions and relations through their historical dynamics [5,6]. Environmental history attempts to reconstruct the complex interactions between the environment and the economic, political, and socio-cultural factors that together form a web of systemic relationships that shape and influence each other in powerful ways [7,8]. iations.
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