Jaime Paneque-Gálvez

Presence and Purpose of Nonindigenous Peoples on Indigenous Lands: A Descriptive Account from the Bolivian Lowlands

Integration into the market economy changes indigenous peoples use of land and resources. We study one pathway leading to integration of indigenous peoples to the market economy: the entrance of nonindigenous peoples into lands inhabited by indigenous populations. We analyzed data from a survey (n = 779) in 87 Tsimane’ villages, an Amazonian society. We assessed the entrance of traders, loggers, cattle ranchers, highland colonist farmers, and other nonindigenous peoples in villages settled in parks, forest concessions, indigenous territories, and private lands. Interactions were generally frequent, friendly, and had an economic basis. The Tsimane’ expressed hostility to the entrance of highland colonist farmers. The entrance of nonindigenous peoples was associated with unregulated natural resource extraction. If conservationists want to gain the allegiance of Tsimane’ on conservation efforts, they will have to present them with a better alternative than the current economic benefits generated by the presence of nonindigenous peoples on their lands.

Are Ecologically Important Tree Species the Most Useful? A Case Study from Indigenous People in the Bolivian Amazon

Are Ecologically Important Tree Species the Most Useful? A Case Study from Indigenous People in the Bolivian Amazon. Researchers have argued that indigenous peoples prefer to use the most apparent plant species, particularly for medicinal uses. However, the association between the ecological importance of a species and its usefulness remains unclear. In this paper we quantify such association for six use categories (firewood, construction, materials, food, medicines, and other uses). We collected data on the uses of 58 tree species, as reported by 93 informants in 22 villages in the Tsimane’ territory (Bolivian Amazon). We calculated the ecological importance of the same species by deriving their importance value index (IVI) in 48 0.1-ha old-growth forest plots. Matching both data sets, we found a positive relation between the IVI of a species and its overall use value (UV) as well as with its UV for construction and materials. We found a negative relation between IVI and UV for species that were reportedly used for medicine and food uses, and no clear pattern for the other categories. We hypothesize that species used for construction or crafting purposes because of their physical properties are more easily substitutable than species used for medicinal or edible purposes because of their chemical properties.Las especies de árboles de mayor importancia ecológica ¿son también las más útiles? Estudio de caso en un pueblo indígena de la Amazonia boliviana. Se ha argumentado que las poblaciones indígenas usan más las especies de plantas más comunes, especialmente para fines medicinales. Sin embargo, los patrones de asociación entre la importancia ecológica de una especie y su utilidad no son totalmente consistentes. En este estudio cuantificamos esta asociación para seis categorías de usos (leña, construcción, materiales, comestible, medicinal, y otros usos) en el territorio Tsimane’ (Amazonía boliviana). Recogimos datos de usos de 58 especies de árboles, reportados por 93 informantes en 22 comunidades, y combinamos estos datos con la importancia ecológica de las especies, estimada por su índice de importancia ecológica (IVI) en 48 parcelas de 0.1 ha establecidas en bosque maduro. Encontramos una relación positiva entre el IVI de las especies y su valor de uso (UV) general, además de su UV en construcción y materiales. Encontramos una relación negativa entre el IVI y el UV para las plantas medicinales y comestibles, y ningún patrón claro para las otras categorías. Nuestros datos sugieren que las especies usadas para construcción o materiales por sus propiedades físicas son más fácilmente sustituibles que las especies usadas como medicinales o comestibles por sus propiedades químicas.

Exploring Indigenous Landscape Classification across Different Dimensions: A Case Study from the Bolivian Amazon

Abstract Decisions on landscape management are often dictated by government officials based on their own understandings of how landscape should be used and managed, but rarely considering local peoples’ understandings of the landscape they inhabit. We use data collected through free listings, field transects and interviews to describe how an Amazonian group of hunter-horticulturalists, the Tsimane’, classify and perceive the importance of different elements of the landscape across the ecological, socioeconomic, and spiritual dimensions. The Tsimane’ recognise nine folk ecotopes (i.e. culturally recognised landscape units) and use a variety of criteria (including geomorphological features and landscape uses) to differentiate ecotopes from one another. The Tsimane’ rank different folk ecotopes in accordance with their perceived ecological, socioeconomic, and spiritual importance. Understanding how local people perceive their landscape contributes towards a landscape management planning paradigm that acknowledges the continuing contributions to management of landscape by its inhabitants, as well as their cultural and land use rights.

Comment on Gebhardt et al. MAD-MEX: Automatic Wall-to-Wall Land Cover Monitoring for the Mexican REDD-MRV Program Using All Landsat Data. Remote Sens. 2014, 6, 3923–3943

Gebhardt et al. (2014) presented the Monitoring Activity Data for the Mexican REDD+ program (MAD-MEX), an automatic nation-wide land cover monitoring system for the Mexican REDD+ MRV. Though MAD-MEX represents a valuable first effort toward establishing a national reference emissions level for the implementation of REDD+ in Mexico, in this paper, we argue that this land cover system has important limitations that may prevent it from becoming operational for REDD+ MRV. Specifically, we show that (1) the accuracy assessment of MAD-MEX land cover maps is optimistically biased; (2) the ability of MAD-MEX to monitor land cover change, including deforestation and forest degradation; is poor and (3) the use of an entirely automatic classification approach, such as that followed by MAD-MEX, is highly problematic in the case of a large and heterogeneous country like Mexico. We discuss these limitations and call into question the ability of a land cover monitoring system, such as MAD-MEX, both to elaborate a national reference emissions level and to monitor future forest cover change, as part of a REDD+ MRV system. We provide some insights with the aim of improving the development of nation-wide land cover monitoring systems in Mexico and elsewhere.

Validation of MODIS Vegetation Continuous Fields for monitoring deforestation and forest degradation: two cases in Mexico

Abstract This study assesses whether MODIS Vegetation Continuous Fields percent tree cover (PTC) data can detect deforestation and forest degradation. To assess the usefulness of PTC for detecting deforestation, we used a data set consisting of eight forest and seven non-forest categories. To evaluate forest degradation, we used data from two temperate forest types in three conservation states: primary (dense), secondary (moderately degraded) and open (heavily degraded) forest. Our results show that PTC can differentiate temperate forest from non-forest categories (p = 0.05) and thus suggests PTC can adequately detect deforestation in temperate forests. In contrast, single-date PTC data does not appear to be adequate to detect forest degradation in temperate forests. As for tropical forest, PTC can partially discriminate between forest and non-forest categories.

Spatial Fix and Metabolic Rift as Conceptual Tools in Land-Change Science

The cumulative and systemic implications of land change have prompted the inclusion of land-change science (LCS) in global change and sustainability discourse (Foley et al. 2005; Turner, Lambin, and Reenberg 2007). The Board of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment devoted significant portions of its report to land change and estimated that humans have “transformed”more than half of six of the Biosphere’s terrestrial biomes and converted 25 per cent of the Earth’s terrestrial surface to cultivation (MEA 2005). Most projections indicate increased land scarcity in the near future, primarily due to expanding cultivation and urban expansion (Foley et al. 2011; Lambin and Meyfroidt 2011; UNEP 2012). This widespread and accelerating transformation of terrestrial biomes is one of the factors that prompted researchers to caution that forces within human society may be pushing the Biosphere toward a critical threshold and into a functional state with which humans are unacquainted (Barnosky et al. 2012).

Assessing forest cover change in Mexico from annual MODIS VCF data (2000–2010)

ABSTRACT We applied annual Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) product Vegetation Continuous Fields (VCF) data for the detection of forest cover change (FCC) in Mexico over the period 2000–2010. We excluded the pixels with uncertain information and applied a moving average and low-pass filter to smooth the multi-temporal data to reduce the fluctuations in the forest cover for each pixel. We applied a linear regression model and created two scenarios based on the coefficient of determination and slope to determine whether a pixel had changed its land cover over the study period. This model was able to label detected changes as deforestation, degradation, reforestation, and regrowth, based on the initial and final values of forest cover. The results showed that there has been more forest gain (reforestation and regrowth) than forest loss (deforestation and degradation) during the study period. We verified these results by comparing with the biomass data derived from the Mexican National Forest and Soil Inventory (Inventario Nacional Forestal y de Suelos, abbreviated to INFyS). Our model provides an efficient method to assess FCC at national level, which can contribute to the development of a reference level of greenhouse gas emission as necessary for the implementation of the international policy for reduction of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+).

High overlap between traditional ecological knowledge and forest conservation found in the Bolivian Amazon

It has been suggested that traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) may play a key role in forest conservation. However, empirical studies assessing to what extent TEK is associated with forest conservation compared with other variables are rare. Furthermore, to our knowledge, the spatial overlap of TEK and forest conservation has not been evaluated at fine scales. In this paper, we address both issues through a case study with Tsimane’ Amerindians in the Bolivian Amazon. We sampled 624 households across 59 villages to estimate TEK and used remote sensing data to assess forest conservation. We ran statistical and spatial analyses to evaluate whether TEK was associated and spatially overlapped with forest conservation at the village level. We find that Tsimane’ TEK is significantly and positively associated with forest conservation although acculturation variables bear stronger and negative associations with forest conservation. We also find a very significant spatial overlap between levels of Tsimane’ TEK and forest conservation. We discuss the potential reasons underpinning our results, which provide insights that may be useful for informing policies in the realms of development, conservation, and climate. We posit that the protection of indigenous cultural systems is vital and urgent to create more effective policies in such realms.

Forest cover change analysis by object based method using spot and rapideye images

In this paper we present forest cover change analysis by object based method with SPOT-5 (2007) and RapidEye (2013) images for an Ejido in the state of Jalisco, Mexico. We identified three classes in images of each date: 1) forest 2) degraded forest and 3) non-forest. An object based image analysis was applied to first segment the images into objects, and then classify the objects into the above three classes. We compared the results from this object based model with a model based on pixel based method. Classified images from both methods were evaluated with verification data composed of 254 random points and object based methods obtained slightly higher overall accuracy than the pixel based methods. Forest cover changes were analysed by constructing a model in DINAMICA (3.0.6) in which the forest classes of two dates were compared, and the forest cover changes were derived including deforestation, degradation, regeneration, and revegetation. The results show that although the overall accuracies of the classifications show no significance difference by McNemar’s test, except the classifications between MLC and MD for 2007, the obtained forest change results show big variance between adopted methods and it is rather difficult to compare them. The future study will apply test data for forest change classes and decide the best change results with the highest accuracies.

Validation of MODIS vegetation continuous fields in two areas in Mexico

The MODIS vegetation continuous fields (VCF) product has a percent tree cover layer; hence it could potentially be used to detect hotspots of deforestation and forest degradation, if data accuracy is high. This paper assesses the accuracy of the VCF percent tree cover layer by comparing it with land cover maps in two areas in Mexico. Specifically, we assess whether it can (1) differentiate forest from non-forest and (2) detect forest degradation. The VCF percent tree cover layer is considered accurate if the percent tree cover value of forest is markedly higher than non-forest, and the value of conserved forest higher than degraded forest. Our results show that VCF percent tree cover can accurately differentiate forest from non-forest except from the case of tropical dry forest. It also discriminate primary forest from open secondary forest; however, secondary forest with regrowth shows higher percent tree cover value than primary forest. Based on the obtained results, the VCF percent tree cover seems to be a promising product for deforestation and degradation detection. However, a quantitative assessment incorporating other areas with more vegetation types is recommended before its application for forest cover change analysis in Mexico.