Population, rural development, and land use among settler households in an agricultural frontier in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve Draft of Submission in press at Geographical Review Please do not cite without the permission of the author
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چکیده
Guatemala was among the world’s leaders in deforestation during the 1990s at a rate of 2% per annum. Much of Guatemala’s recent forest loss has occurred in the emerging agricultural frontiers of the Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR), the heart of the largest contiguous tropical forest in Central America—La Selva Maya. This paper presents data from 241 heads of households and 219 partners of household heads from a geographically stratified sample of eight (of 28) communities in the Sierra de Lacandón National Park (SLNP), the most ecologically biodiverse region in La Selva Maya and a core conservation zone of the MBR. Settler households are examined relative to a host of factors relating to demography, political-economic development, land use, and forest conversion in this first detailed statistically-representative sample probing human population and environment interactions in an emerging agricultural frontier in Central America.
منابع مشابه
Forest Clearing among Farm Households in the Maya Biosphere Reserve Accepted for publication in the Professional Geographer, May 2005 edition
Central America’s tropical forests have been felled more rapidly than those of any other world region during the latter half of the twentieth century. During this time, nearly half of Guatemala’s forests were eliminated. Most of this deforestation has been concentrated in the northern department of Petén. The remaining forests in Petén are now mainly concentrated in the Maya Biosphere Reserve (...
متن کاملForest Clearing Among Farm Households in the Maya Biosphere Reserve*
Central America’s tropical forests have been felled more rapidly than those of any other world region during the latter half of the twentieth century. During this time, nearly half of Guatemala’s forests were eliminated. Most of this deforestation has been concentrated in the northern department of Petén. The remaining forests in Petén are now mainly concentrated in the Maya Biosphere Reserve (...
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This paper examines potential differences in land use between Q’eqchí Maya and Ladino (Spanish speakers of mixed ancestry) farmers in a remote agricultural frontier in northern Petén, Guatemala. The research site, the Sierra de Lacandón National Park (SLNP), is a core conservation zone of Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR). In recent years, much has been written about the dramatic process...
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Agricultural frontiers are hot spots for the most dramatic land cover change in the history of humankind: forest conversion to agriculture. They are also areas of unusually rapid population growth and acute poverty, with scant access to public services and infrastructure. Although a large body of literature explores the determinants of land cover change on the frontier, one issue that has been ...
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Virtually all migration research examines international migration or urbanization. Yet understudied rural migrants are of critical concern for environmental conservation and rural sustainable development. Despite the fact that a relatively small number of all migrants settle remote rural frontiers, these are the agents responsible for perhaps most of the tropical deforestation on the planet. Fu...
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