Successional changes in vegetation and litter structure in traditional Lacandon Maya agroforests

ABSTRACT

The Lacandon Maya is an indigenous group who live in Chiapas, Mexico. Their traditional lifeways involve swidden, sequential agroforestry management that mimics ecological disturbance and modifies succession. Lacandon farmers use fire to clear small plots for polyculture milpa agroforests, which they subsequently fallow. They actively manage all stages of their agroforests to provide ecosystem services and facilitate site recovery. However, it is unclear whether or how quickly the ecosystem structure of Lacandon agroforests matches that of a mature forest. Therefore, this study quantified canopy cover, basal area, ground cover, and litter layers and depth to empirically evaluate successional trends in vegetation and litter structure. Our results show that the Lacandon agroforest structure typically recovers to mature forest levels, but the speed and nature of this recovery vary by metric. They also indicate Lacandon traditional agroforestry is predicated on nuanced understanding of tropical forest successional dynamics, as illustrated by Lacandon farmers’ recognition of successional stages that correspond to patterns in vegetation and leaf litter structure. As such, Lacandon ecological knowledge has the potential to facilitate the restoration of degraded tropical forests in Chiapas, Mexico. However, our findings also demonstrate that shortening fallow periods will undermine the ecological integrity of this traditional agricultural system.

KEYWORDS:

• Sequential agroforest
• agroecology
• Chiapas
• Mexico
• chronosequence
• traditional ecological knowledge

Acknowledgments

We thank the members of the Lacandon Maya community of Lacanja Chansayab, Chiapas, Mexico for their openness and patience. We also wish to thank David Douterlunge Rotsaert at the Instituto Potosino de Investigacion Cientifica y Tecnologica and Erika Mudrak at the Cornell University Statistical Consulting Unit for their help with coding and statistical analysis. We appreciate Gwenyth Widrick’s data entry contribution and Robert Pedian’s field assistance. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [1231334], the National Geographic Society [71235], and the Garden Club of America.

Declarations of interest

No financial interests to disclose; Adolfo Chankin is a Lacandon Maya farmer.

Declaration of interests statement

The authors declared that they have no financial conflict of interest. One of the authors, Adolfo Chankin, is a Lacandon Maya farmer.

Supplementary materials

Supplemental Materials data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems [1231334];Garden Club of America [Fellowship in Ecological Restoration];National Geographic Society [71235].