Forest Cover Dynamics and Forest Transitions in Mexico and Central America: Towards a “Great Restoration”?

2009 ◽  
pp. 85-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Barton Bray
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Forest Cover ◽  
Forest Transitions

scholarly journals Forest transitions: a new conceptual scheme

2017 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 465-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian A. Kull
Keyword(s):  
Forest Cover ◽  
Forest Recovery ◽  
Tree Cover ◽  
Native Forest ◽  
Heuristic Model ◽  
Forest Change ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Political Effect ◽  
Forest Transitions

Abstract. Forest transitions have recently received much attention, particularly in the hope that the historical transitions from net deforestation to forest recovery documented in several temperate countries might be reproduced in tropical countries. The analysis of forest transitions, however, has struggled with questions of forest definition and has at times focussed purely on tree cover, irrespective of tree types (e.g. native forest or exotic plantations). Furthermore, it has paid little attention to how categories and definitions of forest are used to political effect or shape how forest change is viewed. In this paper, I propose a new heuristic model to address these lacunae, building on a conception of forests as distinct socio-ecological relationships between people, trees, and other actors that maintain and threaten the forest. The model draws on selected work in the forest transition, land change science, and critical social science literatures. It explicitly forces analysts to see forests as much more than a land cover statistic, particularly as it internalizes consideration of forest characteristics and the differential ways in which forests are produced and thought about. The new heuristic model distinguishes between four component forest transitions: transitions in quantitative forest cover (FT1); in characteristics like species composition or density (FT2); in the ecological, socio-economic, and political processes and relationships that constitute particular forests (FT3); and in forest ideologies, discourses, and stories (FT4). The four are interlinked; the third category emerges as the linchpin. An analysis of forest transformations requires attention to diverse social and ecological processes, to power-laden official categories and classifications, and to the discourses and tropes by which people interpret these changes. Diverse examples are used to illustrate the model components and highlight the utility of considering the four categories of forest transitions.

scholarly journals Forest Cover Changes in Tropical South and Central America from 1990 to 2005 and Related Carbon Emissions and Removals

2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (5) ◽  
pp. 1369-1391 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugh D. Eva ◽  
Frédéric Achard ◽  
René Beuchle ◽  
Evaristo de Miranda ◽  
Silvia Carboni ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Carbon Emissions ◽  
Forest Cover ◽  
Forest Cover Changes

scholarly journals Integration of Geospatial Tools and Multi-source Geospatial Data to Evaluate the Tropical Forest Cover Change in Central America and Its Methodological Replicability in Brazil and the DRC

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (17) ◽  
pp. 2705
Author(s):  
Abner Jiménez ◽  
Alexander J. Hernández ◽  
Víctor M Rodríguez-Espinosa
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Forest Cover ◽  
Satellite Image ◽  
National Level ◽  
The State ◽  
Satellite Monitoring ◽  
Forest Cover Change ◽  
Landsat Images ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Geospatial Tools

Satellite monitoring of forests plays a relevant role in the agendas of tropical countries, mainly in the framework of international negotiations to implement a mechanism that ensures a reduction in global CO2 emissions from deforestation. An efficient way to approach this monitoring is to avoid duplication of efforts, generating products in a regional context that are subsequently adopted at the national level. In this effort, you should take advantage of the different data sources available by integrating geospatial tools and satellite image classification algorithms. In this research, a methodological framework was developed to generate cost-efficient national maps of forest cover and its dynamics for the countries of Central America, and its scalability and replicability was explored in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the State of Pará in Brazil. The maps were generated from Landsat images from the years 2000, 2012, and 2017. New geoprocessing elements have been incorporated into the digital classification procedures for satellite images, such as the automated extraction of training samples from secondary sources, the use of official national reference maps that respond to nationally adopted forest definitions, and automation of post-classification adjustments incorporating expert criteria. The applied regional approach offers advantages in terms of reducing costs and time, as well as improving the consistency and coherence of reports at different territorial levels (regional and national), reducing duplication of efforts and optimizing technical and financial resources. In Central America, the percentage of forest area decreased from 44% in 2000 to 38% in 2017. Average deforestation in the 2000–2012 period was 197,443 ha/year and that of 2012–2017 was 332,243 ha/year. Average deforestation for the complete period 2000–2017 was 264,843 ha/year. The tropical forests in both the State of Pará, Brazil, and the DRC have decreased over time.

The Forest Transition

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Rudel
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Forest Cover ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Forest Transition ◽  
Atmospheric Effect ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Final Segment ◽  
Primary Driver ◽  
Forest Transitions

Forest transitions take place when trends over time in forest cover shift from deforestation to reforestation. These transitions are of immense interest to researchers because the shift from deforestation to reforestation brings with it a range of environmental benefits. The most important of these would be an increased volume of sequestered carbon, which if large enough would slow climate change. This anticipated atmospheric effect makes the circumstances surrounding forest transitions of immediate interest to policymakers in the climate change era. This encyclopedia entry outlines these circumstances. It begins by describing the socio-ecological foundations of the first forest transitions in western Europe. Then it discusses the evolution of the idea of a forest transition, from its introduction in 1990 to its latest iteration in 2019. This discussion describes the proliferation of different paths through the forest transition. The focus then shifts to a discussion of the primary driver of the 20th-century forest transitions, economic development, in its urbanizing, industrializing, and globalizing forms. The ecological dimension of the forest transition becomes the next focus of the discussion. It describes the worldwide redistribution of forests toward more upland settings. Climate change since 2000, with its more extreme ecological events in the form of storms and droughts, has obscured some ongoing forest transitions. The final segment of this entry focuses on the role of the state in forest transitions. States have become more proactive in managing forest transitions. This tendency became more marked after 2010 as governments have searched for ways to reduce carbon emissions or to offset emissions through more carbon sequestration. The forest transitions by promoting forest expansion would contribute additional carbon offsets to a nation’s carbon budget. For this reason, the era of climate change could also see an expansion in the number of promoted forest transitions.

scholarly journals Evaluating the bio-hydrological impact of a cloud forest in Central America using a semi-distributed water balance model

2013 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-20b ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis A. Caballero ◽  
Zachary M. Easton ◽  
Brian K. Richards ◽  
Tammo S. Steenhuis
Keyword(s):  
Water Balance ◽  
Central America ◽  
Forest Cover ◽  
Cloud Forest ◽  
Water Balance Model ◽  
Population Pressure ◽  
Balance Model ◽  
Annual Rainfall ◽  
Management Decision ◽  
Model Parameters

Abstract Water scarcity poses a major threat to food security and human health in Central America and is increasingly recognized as a pressing regional issues caused primarily by deforestation and population pressure. Tools that can reliably simulate the major components of the water balance with the limited data available and needed to drive management decision and protect water supplies in this region. Four adjacent forested headwater catchments in La Tigra National Park, Honduras, ranging in size from 70 to 635 ha were instrumented and discharge measured over a one year period. A semi-distributed water balance model was developed to characterize the bio-hydrology of the four catchments, one of which is primarily cloud forest cover. The water balance model simulated daily stream discharges well, with Nash Sutcliffe model efficiency (E) values ranging from 0.67 to 0.90. Analysis of calibrated model parameters showed that despite all watersheds having similar geologic substrata, the bio-hydrological response the cloud forest indicated less plantavailable water in the root zone and greater groundwater recharge than the non cloud forest cover catchments. This resulted in watershed discharge on a per area basis four times greater from the cloud forest than the other watersheds despite only relatively minor differences in annual rainfall. These results highlight the importance of biological factors (cloud forests in this case) for sustained provision of clean, potable water, and the need to protect the cloud forest areas from destruction, particularly in the populated areas of Central America.

Early Maya Adaptive Patterns: Mid-Late Holocene Paleoenvironmental Evidence from Pacific Guatemala

2006 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hector Neff ◽  
Deborah M. Pearsall ◽  
John G. Jones ◽  
Bárbara Arroyo ◽  
Shawn K. Collins ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Late Holocene ◽  
Forest Cover ◽  
Human Impacts ◽  
Sediment Cores ◽  
Variable Interval ◽  
Archaic Period ◽  
Return Rates ◽  
Mangrove Estuary ◽  
Early Formative

AbstractWe summarize what is known about Archaic period occupation of southeastern Mesoamerica and Central America as background for presenting new paleoenvironmental evidence of pre-Early Formative human impacts on the landscape of Pacific coastal Guatemala. Our evidence comes from sediment cores in three locations, all of which are in the mangrove-estuary zone of the lower coast. Pollen and phytoliths from the cores document increased burning, decreased forest cover, the appearance of domesticates, and increased disturbance indicators at various times during the Archaic period, the earliest being around 3500 cal B.C. The available evidence demonstrates that shifting horticulture was an early and widespread adaptation to the southeastern Mesoamerican deciduous tropical forest and constituted the base from which later adaptations, including that of early Maya farmers, differentiated. Early Formative adaptive innovations may have been favored by shifts in return rates from various estuarine and terrestrial resources during a dry and variable interval 2000 and 1500 cal B.C.

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