Deforestation of montane cloud forest in the Central Highlands of Guatemala: contributing factors and implications for sustainability in Q’eqchi’ communities

Abstract

Cloud forest in the Central Highlands of Guatemala provides important ecosystem services for the Q'eqchi' Maya but has been disappearing at an increasing rate in recent decades. This research documents changes in cloud forest cover, explores some contributing factors to deforestation, and considers forest preservation and food security implications for Q'eqchi' communities. We used a transdisciplinary framework that synthesized remote sensing/GIS analysis of land cover change, focus group dialogs, and surveys. Expansion of subsistence agriculture is a key proximate cause of cloud forest removal, followed by extraction of fuelwood and larger-scale logging operations. Predisposing environmental factors such as rugged topography, steep slopes, and poor soils contribute to low agricultural productivity that contributes to increased conversion of forest to agricultural land. The key underlying driving forces for deforestation locally are population growth and subdivision of land. Population growth is increasing the demand for agricultural land and, as a result, the Q'eqchi' clear the forest to meet the need for increased food production. Furthermore, population growth is driving subdivision of land, decreasing fallow periods, and putting additional strain on poor soils, all of which exacerbate land degradation. Given the increase in population in the region, food production must be improved on existing agricultural land to avoid the need to put more land into production to meet food requirements. Thus, efforts to sustainably increase agricultural productivity are fundamental to efforts to conserve the cloud forest and to safeguard essential ecosystem services.

Perspectives of Remote Sensing and GIS Applications in Tropical Forest Management

“…Using a transdisciplinary framework that synthesized remote sensing and GIS analysis of landcover change, focus group dialogues and surveys, Pope et al, (2015) analyzed cloud forests in the Central Highlands of Guatemala. The study, found that expansion of subsistence agriculture is a key proximate cause of cloud forest removal, followed by extraction of fuelwood and larger-scale logging operations.…”

Drone remote sensing for forestry research and practices

“…Along with the development of sensor and computation technologies, remote sensing applications in forestry have evolved from conventional aerial photography-based forest inventories (Lyons 1966) to satellite imagery-based forest resource monitoring (Asner et al 2005;Tang et al 2010;Pope et al 2015), from multispectral data-based forest cover mapping (Zhu and Evans 1994;Shao et al 1996) to hyperspectral data-based biophysical forest estimations (Martin and Aber 1997;Treitz and Howarth 1999), and from passive remote sensing-based forest leaf area index measurements (Turner et al 1999;Thakur et al 2014) to active remote sensing-based forest structure characterizations (Dubayah and Drake 2000;Lefsky et al 2002). Through the integration of multiple data sources, it is possible to improve estimations of forest volume and biomass (Lu 2006;Koch 2010).…”

Modelling the impact of agroforestry on hydrology of Mara River Basin in East Africa

“…Forests provide a number of ecosystem services, such as improving soil water infiltration conditions, soil erosion control and provision of wood-related products like timber and fuelwood (Calder, 2005;Ong et al, 2006). The fertility potential of soils under forests and the need to increase crop production makes forests a target for conversion to agricultural land through deforestation (Laurance et al, 2014;Pope et al, 2015). There is therefore high competition for land between forests and agricultural production in some regions of the world, particularly in the tropics (Laurance et al, 2014).…”