Version 1
: Received: 9 May 2023 / Approved: 9 May 2023 / Online: 9 May 2023 (08:46:10 CEST)
Version 2
: Received: 20 June 2023 / Approved: 21 June 2023 / Online: 21 June 2023 (12:56:03 CEST)
Portillo-Quintero, C.; Hernandez-Stefanoni, J.L.; Dupuy, J.M. Forest Clearing Dynamics and Its Relation to Remotely Sensed Carbon Density and Plant Species Diversity in the Puuc Biocultural State Reserve, Mexico. Remote Sens.2023, 15, 3445.
Portillo-Quintero, C.; Hernandez-Stefanoni, J.L.; Dupuy, J.M. Forest Clearing Dynamics and Its Relation to Remotely Sensed Carbon Density and Plant Species Diversity in the Puuc Biocultural State Reserve, Mexico. Remote Sens. 2023, 15, 3445.
Portillo-Quintero, C.; Hernandez-Stefanoni, J.L.; Dupuy, J.M. Forest Clearing Dynamics and Its Relation to Remotely Sensed Carbon Density and Plant Species Diversity in the Puuc Biocultural State Reserve, Mexico. Remote Sens.2023, 15, 3445.
Portillo-Quintero, C.; Hernandez-Stefanoni, J.L.; Dupuy, J.M. Forest Clearing Dynamics and Its Relation to Remotely Sensed Carbon Density and Plant Species Diversity in the Puuc Biocultural State Reserve, Mexico. Remote Sens. 2023, 15, 3445.
Abstract
The Puuc Biocultural State Reserve (PBSR is an unique model for tropical dry forest conservation in Mexico. Preserving forest biodiversity and carbon within the PBSR depends on the mainte-nance of low impact productive activities coordinated by multiple communal and private land-owners. In this study, we used state-of-the-art remote sensing data to investigate past spatial patterns in forest clearing dynamics and its relation to forest carbon density and forest plant species richness and diversity in the context of the forest conservation goals of the PBSR. We used a Landsat-based continuous change detection product for the 2000-2021 period and compared it to carbon density and tree species richness models generated from ALOS-2 PALSAR 2 imagery and national scale forest inventory data. The estimated error-adjusted area of detected annual forest clearings from the year 2000 until the year 2021 was 230,511 ha in total (+19,979 ha). The analysis of annual forest clearing frequency and area suggests that although forest clearing was significantly more intensive outside of the PBSR than within the PBSR during the entire 2000-2021 period, there is no evidence suggesting that the frequency and magnitude of forest clearing has changed over the years after the creation of the PBSR in 2011. An emergent hotspot analysis shows, however, that high spatiotemporal clustering of forest clearing events (hotspots) during the 2012-2021 pe-riod was less common than prior to 2011 and these more recent hotspots have been confined to areas outside the PBSR. After comparing forest clearing events to carbon density and tree species richness models, results show that land owners outside the PBSR often clear forests with lower carbon density and species diversity than land owners inside the PBSR. This suggests that, compared to land owners outside the PBSR, land owners within the PBSR might be practicing longer fallow periods allowing forests to attain higher carbon density and tree species richness and hence better soil nutrient recovery after land abandonment. In conclusion, our results show that the PBSR effectively acted as a stabilizing forest management scheme during the 2012-2021 period minimizing the impact of productive activities by lowering the frequency of forest clearing events and preserving late secondary forests within the PBSR. We recommend the continuation of efforts for providing alternative optimal field data collection strategies and modeling techniques to spatially predict key tropical forest attributes. The combination of these models with contin-uous change detection datasets will allow to reveal underlying ecological processes and generate information better adapted to forest governance scales.
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Received:
21 June 2023
Commenter:
Carlos Portillo
Commenter's Conflict of Interests:
Author
Comment:
The mansucript has been modified based on the comments of three reviewers. There has been corrections to the Title, Figures and text. We have especially made sure that the main goal from the analysis is clear: the study is focused on investigating spatial patterns in forest clearing dynamics (obtained with a standard methodology) and its relation to forest carbon density and forest plant species richness and diversity in the context of the forest conservation goals of the Puuc Biocultural State Reserve (PBSR) in Mexico.
Commenter: Carlos Portillo
Commenter's Conflict of Interests: Author
There has been corrections to the Title, Figures and text. We have especially made sure that the main goal from the analysis is clear: the study is focused on investigating spatial patterns in forest clearing dynamics (obtained with a standard methodology) and its relation to forest carbon density and forest plant species richness and diversity in the context of the forest conservation goals of the Puuc Biocultural State Reserve (PBSR) in Mexico.