Maya Forest Research Articles

Megan Ybarra, Green Wars: Conservation and Decolonization in the Maya Forest

Megan Ybarra, Green Wars: Conservation and Decolonization in the Maya Forest

Placing human landscape legacies in a dynamic systems framework.

Placing human landscape legacies in a dynamic systems framework.

Seasonal Fluxes of Dissolved Nutrients in Streams of Catchments Dominated by Swidden Agriculture in the Maya Forest of Belize, Central America

The biogeochemistry of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) in tropical streams and rivers is strongly regulated by the pronounced seasonality of rainfall and associated changes in hydrology. Land use and land cover change (LULCC) can also be a dominant driver of changes in stream biogeochemistry yet responses are not fully understood and vary across different LULCC scenarios. We measured dissolved and total nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) concentrations in four tributary streams of the Temash River watershed in southern Belize, Central America. The dominant land use practice in each of the four study catchments was swidden agriculture. We documented a strong seasonal control on the export of nutrients from these study systems with daily N fluxes increasing approximately 10-fold during the onset of the rainy season. P fluxes increased almost 4-fold during the same time period. Comparisons with nutrient export coefficients from other tropical streams suggest that nutrient export in streams of the Temash River watershed is similar or slightly lower. Establishing improved understanding of the terrestrial and hydrologic controls of N and P transport across the terrestrial-aquatic boundary and developing a comprehensive nutrient budget that includes inputs and outputs associated with crop production is warranted in future work.

Green Wars: Colonization and Conservation in the Maya Forest

Green Wars: Colonization and Conservation in the Maya Forest

Above and below the Maya forest.

Advanced remote sensing technology raises questions about settlement and land use

Margin for error: Anthropogenic geomorphology of Bajo edges in the Maya Lowlands

Many early Maya cities developed along the edges of large structural or karst depressions (bajos). This topographic position aided growing populations to more effectively capture and store rainwater, a necessity for year-round occupation of interior portions of the Maya Lowlands of Mexico and Central America. Ancient Maya forest clearance on sloping terrain led to accelerated soil loss and the aggradation of the bajo margins. These newly created margins of colluvial lands became a focus of subsequent intensive agriculture and helped underwrite further urban expansion. We document this long-term landscape transformation with data derived principally from field investigations at Tikal, Guatemala, and Yaxnohcah, Mexico, but with reference to other Maya centers in the Elevated Interior Region (EIR). Data are derived from field investigations, interpretation of lidar imagery, and laboratory analyses. We present a model of three variants of bajo margin landscape change with differences attributable to topography, lithology, hydrology, and cultural processes. We present preliminary data on crops that were cultivated on bajo-margin soils. We further describe how agriculture was adapted to evolving bajo margins as evidenced by systems of field walls, terraces, and ditches.

Resenha do livro “The Maya Forest Garden: Eight Millenia of Sustainable Cultivation of the tropical Woodlands”

Resenha do livro “The Maya Forest Garden: Eight Millenia of Sustainable Cultivation of the tropical Woodlands”

Development of an Ideotype-Based Selection Tool for Native Tropical Tree Breeding by Smallholder Planters in Mexico’s Maya Forest

Tree planters of the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico are mostly first-generation small-scale forest owners. As a consequence of the lack of a management plan, trees employed for plantations are currently produced without any traceability or genetic improvement protocol, resulting in the reduced quality and heterogeneity of established materials. Recently, the Mexican government published a law to force planters to reverse this situation through the initiation and operation of germplasm management and traceability programs within each physiographic sub-province. Thus, planters located in the “Campeche Karts sub-provenance” now need to select superior trees for plant production, provenance assays, and orchard establishment. As a reference for the improvement goals in this work, we developed a model ideotype tree and qualification tool based on a weight-free selection index to compare trees in established plantations to enable the effective selection of superior trees to be used as seed sources and as a starting population for genetic improvement programs. The tool presented here is easy to use by planters, requiring a very basic computer or smartphone to run a spreadsheet where simple morphometric evaluation are captured, trees are qualified in comparison to the ideotypic values of each parameter with the aid of common field equipment. When this tool was applied to individuals from two different plantations, the qualification methodology ranked the individuals, allowing for the selection of superior trees in a more robust way, in contrast to the use of parameters mostly based on price and driven by wood volume.

Insights into the multiannual home range of a Baird’s tapir (Tapirus bairdii) in the Maya Forest

We report home range estimates of an individual Baird’s tapir ( Tapirus bairdii ) recorded from May 7, 2011 to September 2015 at the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in Southern Mexico. The tapir was captured and equipped with a VHF collar in a pond within the reserve. The signal failed to transmit in the following month but with the help of a network of camera traps deployed in nearby water bodies we monitored this individual during four years and a half. We have estimated home range by the Minimum convex polygon method and also by constructing a buffer around camera traps locations where this animal was photo-captured. With few available records (<30) but spanned over four years the Minimum convex polygon estimate for all locations resulted in 23.9 km2. When we constructed a buffer around camera trap locations we estimated a home range of 39.9 km2 with a core area of 4.1 km2. Maximum distance dispersed from this tapir was 10.5 km from its original location. The home range estimates reported here are larger than previously reported for this species. This is the first report on the home range, travel capacity, and distances for the Baird’s tapir in the Calakmul Region.

A BOTANICAL INVENTORY OF FOREST ON KARSTIC LIMESTONE AND METAMORPHIC SUBSTRATE IN THE CHIQUIBUL FOREST, BELIZE, WITH FOCUS ON WOODY TAXA

The Chiquibul Forest Reserve and National Park in Belize is a priority conservation area within the ‘Maya Forest’ in Central America. Although taxonomic data are essential for the development of conservation plans in the region, there is limited knowledge of the existing species in the area. Here we present a botanical species list of mostly woody taxa based on voucher specimens, with particular focus on the Raspaculo watershed in the eastern part of the National Park. Within the Raspaculo watershed, a comparison is made between 0.1 ha of valley floor and 0.1 ha of hilltop vegetation, sampling trees, shrubs, palms and lianas ≥2.5 cm diameter at breast height. Additionally, a 1 ha plot was established in the Upper Raspaculo watershed. Our study shows 38 new species records for the region, and important additions to the flora of Belize. New records were recorded from forests on both metamorphic and karstic substrate, including previously overlooked hilltop forest elements. Quantitative assessment of vegetation across elevation zones shows distinct elements dominating on valley floors and hilltops. Our results show that the Chiquibul contains at least 58% of Belize’s threatened plant species, and represent a source of information for the management and conservation of the area.

Beyond Nature Appropriation: Towards Post-development Conservation in the Maya Forest

The establishment of biosphere reserves in Mexico was followed by alternative livelihood conservation/development projects to integrate indigenous groups into Western style conservation under the idea of sustainable development and participation. In this paper, I discuss the outcomes of two forest wildlife management projects in one Maya community along the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve in the state of Quintana Roo. Both projects ultimately failed and the community mobilised and expelled the NGO from the community. I argue that the failure of these projects involved two dynamics: 1) lack of coherence between the objectives of state agencies, conservation NGOs, and the local community; and 2) unequal ethnic relations, reproducing relations of colonial inequality and dictating how indigenous groups can participate in managing a territory for conservation. If collaboration and local participation are key in conservation management programs, these case studies suggest that greater institutional accountability and community autonomy are needed to make the practice of conservation more democratic and participatory. The expulsion of the NGO as a conservation and development broker also opened the space for, and possibilities of, post-development conservation practice that challenges the normalising expectations of Western biodiversity conservation.

Taming the jungle, saving the Maya Forest: sedimented counterinsurgency practices in contemporary Guatemalan conservation

This paper examines the significance of historically sedimented military practices for conservation in contemporary Guatemala. During a 36-year civil war, the military represented the lowlands as dangerous jungle that had to be tamed to justify its counterinsurgency campaigns, thus positioning the jungle's inhabitants as suspect citizens or potential insurgents. Also during the war, international conservationists coalesced to successfully lobby for a protected areas system that enclosed one-third of Guatemala's territory. This paper argues that this transnational conservation alliance, comprised of international conservation agencies and national elites, evokes the violence of scorched earth counterinsurgency. The use of jungle and forest discourses in successive territorial projects produces a racialized landscape that connects a violent past to a violent present. In recent years, jungle discourses have articulated advocacy for increased militarization to fight the ‘war on drugs’ in protected areas. As such, I argue thatconservation agencies and the military are complicit in reproducing social inequalities, often through violent exclusions. This paper was presented at the 2010 International Conference on Global Land Grabbing, sponsored by the Land Deal Politics Initiative, at the Institute for Development Studies, University of Sussex. A National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant provided research support. Leonardo Luc, Mario López Barrientos and Alberto Alonso Fradejas all offered important insights into Guatemalan land politics. I consulted the CIRMA Archive and the ProPetén library for key project documents. J. Keith Gilless, Octaviano Chavarin, Norman B. Schwartz, Melissa Leach and two anonymous reviewers wrote incisive comments on paper drafts. I am especially grateful to Nancy L. Peluso for encouraging me to develop this paper in consonance with her work. I am responsible for all translations. Any remaining errors are my own.

A natural history of Belize: inside the Maya forest

A natural history of Belize: inside the Maya forest

The Maya Forest: Destroyed or cultivated by the ancient Maya?

Both academic and popular perceptions concerning the relationship between the Maya (ancient and modern) and the Maya Forest in which their culture developed and persisted for more than three millennia are varied and continuously subject to change (1). The analysis of a sediment core from a pond located near the ancient Maya city of Copan, Honduras, interpreted by McNeil et al. (2) in this issue of PNAS, offers a unique perspective on long-term interactions between the Maya and their environment. The results of this study demonstrate how refinement of methods and extension of time frames can provide dramatic reinterpretations of scenarios that have become engrained in both academic and popular perceptions about the Maya. Whereas the pollen analysis presented and interpreted by McNeil et al. (2) cannot be expected to provide a full picture of the Maya Forest and how it may have been managed, it does provide sound and convincing evidence that the Late Classic Maya at Copan did not foolishly strip away the forest and destroy their environment as portrayed in Jared Diamond’s best-selling book (3) and taught in our children’s classrooms. Among academics, we generally recognize that the results of our research represent what we hope to be the best interpretation of currently available data, and that our interpretations will be subject to modifications as new data and methods are developed. At the same time, our initial interpretations, often based on very limited data, are picked up and amplified in the public realm through books and movies that influence audiences a thousand-fold greater than the readers of our obscure academic publications. I was recently a reviewer for California Education and the Environment Curriculum for seventh grade classes that would be taught about the rise and fall of Pre-Columbian civilizations in the Americas, with a strong focus on the ancient Maya. One of the primary lessons in the curriculum was how the ancient Maya exemplified uncontrolled destruction of the environment and the consequent collapse of their civilization. This lesson was based in large part on the earlier interpretation of a sediment core from Copan (4). Dramatic swings in our interpretations concerning the historical ecology of the Maya Lowlands will continue, at least until enough studies, such as the one presented by McNeil et al. (2), are conducted and published.

Origins of the Maya Forest Garden: Maya Resource Management

Abstract There is growing interest in the ecology of the Maya Forest past, present, and future, as well as in the role of humans in the transformation of this ecosystem. In this paper, we bring together and re-evaluate paleoenvironmental, ethnobiological, and archaeological data to reconstruct the related effects of climatic shifts and human adaptations to and alterations of the lowland Maya Forest. In particular, we consider the paleoenvironmental data from the Maya Forest area in light of interpretations of the precipitation record from the Cariaco Basin. During the Archaic period, a time of stable climatic conditions 8,000–4,000 years ago, we propose that the ancestral Maya established an intimate relationship with an expanding tropical forest, modifying the landscape to meet their subsistence needs. We propose that the succeeding period of climatic chaos during the Preclassic period, 4,000–1,750 years ago, provoked the adaptation to settled agrarian life. This new adaptation, we suggest, was based on ...

Dominant Plants Of The Maya Forest And Gardens Of El Pilar: Implications For Paleoenvironmental Reconstructions

The ancient Maya have been accused of destroying their forests yet the Maya forest today is replete with economic value, and contemporary traditional Maya forest gardeners manage and maintain the dominant plant so f the forest for their economic values. Paleoenvironmental reconstructions of the Maya area have relied on the distribution of primarily wind borne pollen in ancient soil deposits, but the majority of these plants are pollinated biotically. An examination of the pollen syndromes of the dominant species of the Maya forest and the forest gardens demonstrates that only one of the dominant plants of the forest today appears in the pollen record of paleoenvironmental soil cores. In contrast, all the herbs and grasses of the high performance milpa, although dominated by maize, are in the pollen record. Rather than deforested, I suggest that the ancient Maya created a mosaic of field to forest, very little of which can be effectively defined in the palynological record.

Exploring The Legacy Of The Maya Forest

The legacy of the Maya forest is entwined with the Maya people who have lived and worked across this landscape over the past five millennia or more. The signatures of their land use, the complexity of their strategies, and the diversity of their adaptation is only recently being investigated, let alone understood. This special issue of the Journal of Ethnobiology takes a close look at the region and brings into focus the intricacies that must be considered in the explanations of the rise and fall of the Maya as well as the conservation of the Maya forest today. The papers herein combine archaeological and ethnographic data on the Maya and the long history of their relationship with the forest. Underscoring all the papers is the evidence that the Maya tropics are resilient as a result of the land use strategies that have become a part of its essence.

Are Colonial Pastures The Ancestors Of The Contemporary Maya Forest

Using the quantitative techniques of phytosociology and ordination, we test the hypothesis that human agency has created the flowering plant species composition of the forests of Cayo, Belize. Specifically, we test the degree to which Yucatec Maya domestic forest gardens and pastures share assemblages of native species with three nearby samples of uninhabited forest, in other words whether the eastern Petén is a “feral forest.” As have previous studies, our data show that the species assemblages of both pastures and gardens share a high affinity with the forests that surround them. This implies that one is likely derived from the other, but does not prove causality or directionality. NMS ordination of native woody plants in the three sectors shows a far more robust affinity (clustering in the same region in two-dimensional space) between the compositions of the forests and pastures, as opposed to forest and gardens. We conclude that feral pastures – clearly post-contact phenomena – should be considered, in addition to domestic gardens, to be antecedents to the contemporary Maya forest.

Evaluation of a Long-Term Amphibian Monitoring Protocol in Central America

The Maya Forest Monitoring Project (Mayamon) was established in 1997 as an outgrowth of the Belize working group of the Declining Amphibian Populations Task Force. For nine years, Mayamon volunteers censused anuran populations using a protocol that estimates numbers of individuals on the basis of male vocalization. To date, the protocol has been evaluated only through a series of post hoc power analyses; I performed the first field test to assess the effect of species-specific mating system characteristics, survey length, survey frequency, and pond selection on census results for anuran communities within a tropical moist forest in Belize. Under the current protocol, it would take, on average, 359 months of sampling to detect the 11 species I detected at this site using vocalization surveys. In addition, I introduce a method using ANCOVA to determine ideal survey length. Arbitrarily setting the ideal detection to 90% yields a required sampling protocol of 21 minutes; the current minimum of 15 min yields only an 80% detection rate. This method could be adapted for use with other monitoring programs, allowing both the assessment of current efficacy and the extrapolation of required sampling length to reach a given efficacy. The results of these approaches indicate that the Mayamon protocol methodology should be extended if it is to allow investigators to adequately understand the community dynamics of amphibians.

Farm Households and Land Use in a Core Conservation Zone of the Maya Biosphere Reserve, Guatemala

This paper employs cross-tabular analysis, and multivariate and logistic regression to explore demographic, political-economic, socioeconomic, and ecological patterns of farm households and land use outcomes in an emergent agricultural frontier: the Sierra de Lacandon National Park (SLNP)-a core conservation zone of the Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR), Peten, Guatemala. Data were obtained from a 1998 probability sample of 241 farm households, the first large detailed household land use survey in Guatemala’s Selva Maya-the largest lowland tropical forest in Central America. Virtually all settler households were poor maize farmers who colonized the SLNP in search of land for subsistence. While they faced similar ecological and economic conditions, land use strategies and patterns of forest clearing varied with demographic, household, and farm characteristics. Findings support and refute elements from previous frontier land use theory and offer policy implications for conservation and development initiatives in the Maya Forest specifically, and in tropical agricultural frontiers in general.