Forestation in Puerto Rico, 1970s to Present

Abstract

It is important to monitor the trend of forestland changes, as forests are vital sources and sinks of carbon on the earth. One of the most densely populated jurisdictions of the United States, Puerto Rico, has experienced significant transformations in the past century. This study examines forestation in the main island of Puerto Rico during the past four decades using feature extraction and change detection analysis in multitemporal Landsat satellite imagery. The results of the study show that forest cover in Puerto Rico had almost tripled from 15.7% to 45.7% between 1972 and 2014. Moreover, the forestation trend and pace in abandoned coffee plantations and pastures continued after 1990, driven by continuous socioeconomic transformation. Natural forestation and conservation efforts from the government and nongovernment organizations have also contributed to the forest growth on the island. The information gained and lessons learned during the process may be applied to other densely populated tropical insular territories.

Forest Cover and Locality Regulate Response of Watershed Discharge to Rainfall Variability in Caribbean Region

“…Reforestation in Puerto Rico has lasted for decades after the industrialization [30]. Forest cover increased from 15.7% in 1970s to 45.7% in 2014 [31]. The forest cover in Rio Grande de Loiza watershed increased by more than 10% over the period from 1991 to 2010.…”

Light-level geolocation reveals moderate levels of migratory connectivity for declining and stable populations of Black-throated Blue Warblers ( Setophaga caerulescens )

“…Birds from the trailing edge site therefore may have spent the non-breeding period in Puerto Rico, but declining conditions on the island led to reduced survival and lower return rates to the breeding grounds. Forest cover has tripled in Puerto Rico since the 1970s (Yuan et al 2017), but changes in habitat quality or other threats could have affected BTBW during the non-breeding season. A third possibility is that birds did spend the non-breeding season in Puerto Rico and returned to the study sites, but we did not recapture them.…”

Puerto Rico plain pigeon, scaly-naped pigeon and red-tailed hawk: population dynamics and association patterns before and after hurricanes

“…at CVs < 0.20) from survey-based count data collected annually under varying environmental conditions (i.e. future population dynamics may or may not repeat previous ones due to uncertainty from climate change, extreme weather and variation in density-independent and density-dependent responses, resulting in high process variance; Knape 2008, Knape & de Valpine 2011, Oppel et al 2014, Saether et al 2016, we monitored the recovery of the pigeon and hawk populations from low numbers during a period of natural reforestation of abandoned pasturelands and croplands (Koenig 1953, Brandeis & Turner 2013, Yuan et al 2017, and before−after severe abundance de clines from the landfall of 3 major hurricanes during 1986−2021 (Boose et al 2004, Uriarte et al 2019, Hall et al 2020. Because parameter posterior estimates and abundance predictions were updated annually with survey-based count data, we continued learning from monitoring and modelling, despite imperfect observations of population state (e.g.…”