HR: 0800h
AN: B31B-0328    [Abstracts]
TI: FeedbackBetweenHumanActivitiesAndTerrestrialCarbonCyclesInSystemsOfShadeCoffeePro ductionInMexico
AU: * Pena del Valle, A E
EM: ana.pvi@correo.unam.mx
AF: Profesionales Asociados para el Desarrollo de Proyectos, Ricardo Monjes No. 85 Col. Educacion, Coyoacan, Mexico City, DF 04400, Mexico
AU: Perez-Samayoa, I A
EM: padepsamayoa@prodigy.net.mx
AF: Profesionales Asociados para el Desarrollo de Proyectos, Ricardo Monjes No. 85 Col. Educacion, Coyoacan, Mexico City, DF 04400, Mexico
AB: Coffee production in Mexico is carried out within a strong natural context. Coffee is grown under a canopy of several native and introduced tree species. This fact ensures a greater diversity of natural resources and environmental services available for local inhabitants to sustain their livelihoods. However, the lack of opportunities for coffee farmers is increasing the demand over the remaining forest areas by exacerbating non- sustainable timber extraction practices and promoting conversion of forests to pasture lands. This situation hampers the landscapes equilibrium and threatens the wellbeing of rural livelihoods. To understand the interactions between human activities and ecological functions associated with shaded coffee systems, this research has explored the extent to which socio-economic and cultural factors have influenced the use and management of natural resources sustaining coffee livelihoods. At the same time, it examines how customary patterns of resource use have induced changes in the terrestrial carbon cycle at the local level. The empirical study was carried out in a coffee-growing region in Mexico. It involved substantial fieldwork, use of satellite imagery, and participatory research methods in order to gauge a variety of biophysical and socio- economic factors, including forest cover, land use, and carbon balances, as well as, farming practices and off- farming strategies. In addition, a livelihood perspective was applied to approach the linkages between the management of natural resources, the environmental goods and services, and the socio-economic conditions in the coffee-growing region. The empirical evidence from the research marks out shade coffee systems as important supporters for broader natural systems as suppliers of environmental services. However, it also suggests that non-climatic factors might have significant impacts on the local environment and therefore on the terrestrial carbon cycle. According to the research estimations, in the mid-term, rural farmers would have to incorporate a larger extent of land under shifting cultivation and pasture in order to obtain a similar income to that of one hectare of shade coffee. Consequently, the research points out feedback mechanisms between human activities and the natural environment, in order to gain insight into adaptive response mechanisms, which might enhance possibilities for socioeconomic viability in systems of shaded coffee production and proper maintenance of biophysical conditions, environmental services, and human activities.
DE: 0428 Carbon cycling (4806)
DE: 0439 Ecosystems, structure and dynamics (4815)
DE: 0481 Restoration
SC: Biogeosciences [B]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting