Non-Lévy Mobility Patterns of Mexican Me’Phaa Peasants Searching for Fuel Wood

Abstract

We measured mobility patterns that describe walking trajectories of individual Me'Phaa peasants searching and collecting fuelwood in the forests of "La Montaña de Guerrero" in Mexico. These one-day excursions typically follow a mixed pattern of nearly-constant steps when individuals displace from their homes towards potential collecting sites and a mixed pattern of steps of different lengths when actually searching for fallen wood in the forest. Displacements in the searching phase seem not to be compatible with Lévy flights

Lévy foraging patterns of rural humans

“…Rural volunteers in Mexico and Brazil participated in an unsupervised observation season designed to GPS record and track walking trajectories in the forest while performing foraging activities. In Mexico, 20 male participants came from the Me’Phaa ethnic group (which is regarded as a very low income group) in the state of Guerrero, Mexico [ 19 ] whose main economic activity is the low-scale cultivation of Hibiscus sabdariffa flower. The Me’Phaa collect fallen firewood as domestic energy supply.…”

“…Indeed, the coastlines of Great Britain and Norway as well as a variety of contour lines across the United States are reported to be characterized by fractal dimensions ranging between about 1.2 and 1.5 [ 24 – 26 ]. But such fractal scaling seems not to account for our observations because Lévy walks have fractals dimension μ-1 (i.e., fractal dimensions around 0.7) [ 27 ] and, more pertinently, because the Me’Phaa are foraging over (rather than around) hilly terrain [ 19 ] whilst the Cariri and Amazon people mostly forage over flat terrain.…”

“…In this study we determine how common Lévy walk movement patterns are among three rural populations and we propose hypotheses about processes that may explain such patterns. We examined individual movement patterns from three different and unrelated rural groups, among Me’Phaa farmers searching and collecting firewood in the forests of “La Montaña de Guerrero” in southern Mexico [ 19 ], among Brazilian savannah farmers searching for non-cultivated wild fruit in the Chapada do Araripe in Brazil, and among Brazilian Rondonia Amazonian farmers foraging for edible seeds in the rain forest. The people foraging in these areas knew where to find the best trees and knew the best way to reach to them along trails and physical features.…”

Uso y disponibilidad de leña en la región de La Montaña en el estado de Guerrero y sus implicaciones en la unidad ambiental

“…Se sabe que la disponibilidad de leña está relacionada con el tiempo invertido para su bús-queda y recolección (Barnes, Openshaw, Smith y Van der Plas, 1994). En este sentido, en un estudio reciente realizado en un sector de La Montaña se encontró que la recolección de leña requirió una gran inversión de tiempo, además se encontraron rutas de búsqueda distribuidas estocásticamente, lo que sugiere una baja disponibilidad de este recurso (Miramontes, DeSouza, Hernández y Ceccon, 2012). Sin embargo, aún se desconocen las características básicas del aprovechamiento de leña en la región, como la cantidad consumida, las especies más utilizadas o preferidas y su importancia ecológica y cultural.…”

Self-reported Health is Related to Body Height and Waist Circumference in Rural Indigenous and Urbanised Latin-American Populations

“…Xuajin Me'Phaa has extensive experience in community-based fieldwork and has built a close working relationship with the community authorities. The trust and familiarity with the community customs and protocols have previously led to successful academic collaborations 53,54 . Therefore, Xuajin Me'Phaa served as a liaison between the Mexican research group and the communities for the present study, offering mainly two important factors in data collection: the informed consent of community members and participants, and two trained interpreters of Me'Phaa and Spanish language of both sexes.…”