Thirty years of human demography and land-use change in the Atlantic Forest of Misiones, Argentina: a test of forest transition models

IZQUIERDO, A. E.; C. DE ANGELO AND T. M. AIDE

Morelia, Mexico

Congreso; ATBC 2007: Linking tropical biology with human dimension; 2007

Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation

For many years, tropical and subtropical forests have been deforested for agriculture, grazing, and timber extraction. Nevertheless in the last decade, several publications have suggested that some regions of Latin America are showing a process of forest transition. This theory predicts that industrialization and urbanization will lead to the abandonment of marginal agriculture lands, and the recovery of natural systems (e.g. forests). However, there are many ecological, economic, and social factors that could act as barriers to ecosystem recovery. To test these scenarios, we analyzed the socioeconomic and land-use changes during the last 30 years, at provincial and department level in the province of Misiones, Argentina. We described the changes in the distribution of urban and rural populations based on the National Population Censuses from 1970, 1980, 1991, and 2001. Land-use change was based on a supervised analysis of four mosaics of MSS and Landsat TM satellite images from 1973, 1979, 1989 and 2006. The results show that although the change in the rural population varied greatly among the different departments, at the provincial level there has been a dramatic increase in the urban population. The major land-use changes between 1973 and 2006 have been an increase of 302 000 ha of mono-specific plantations (mainly Pinus and Eucalyptus), and a loss of 720 000 ha of natural forests. Misiones possesses the largest remnant of continuous Atlantic Forest, which is famous for its high level of biodiversity and endemism, but much of this “forest” is now mono-specific plantations. Although demographic changes in Misiones have been similar to other regions (i.e. rural-urban migration) and there has been an overall increase in “forest” cover, forest transition in this case is leading to plantations with much lower ecology value.