Deforestation in the southern Yucatan peninsular region: an integrative approach

The tensions between development and preservation of tropical forests heigh ten the need for integrated assessments of deforestation processes and for models that address the fine-tuned location of change. As Mexico's last tro pical forest frontier, the southern Yucatan peninsular region witnesses the se tensions, giving rise to a "hot spot" of tropical deforestation. These f orests register the imprint of ancient Maya uses and selective logging in t he recent past, but significant modern conversion of them for agriculture b egan in the 1960s. Subsequently, as much as 10% of the region's forests hav e been disturbed anthropogenically. The precise rates of conversion and len gth of successional growth in both upland and wetland forests are tied to p olicy and political economic conditions. Pressures on upland forests are ex acerbated by the development of infrastructure for El Mundo Maya, an archae ological and ecological activity predicated on forest maintenance, and by i ncreased subsistence and market cultivation, including lands on the edge of Mexico's largest tropical forest biosphere reserve. In this complex settin g, the southern Yucatan peninsular region project seeks to unite research i n the ecological, social, and remote sensing sciences to provide a firm und erstanding of the dynamics of deforestation and to work towards spatially e xplicit assessments and models that can be used to monitor and project fore st change under different assumptions. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V All ri ghts reserved.