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Comparison of maize yield from traditional milpa and mucuna/maize cover crop system during three annual cycles in Sahcabá, Yucatan.
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When fires blazed through Mexico's forests in 1998, the country experienced a new sense of urgency in its attempts to combat ecosystem degradation and loss of biodiversity. Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (SEMARNAT, the federal environmental protection agency) identified the use of fire in agriculture as a major contributor to the...
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Citations
... Fire is normally used to clear the land after cutting the vegetation for cultivation (Eastmond and Faust, 2006). Fire intensity, frequency, size, seasonality, type, and severity are crucial factors that interact and contribute to the characterization of fire regimes (Pausas and Keeley, 2014). ...
... Noteworthy, during the current study, we observed that the warm and dry season also corresponds to the season when the farmers slash-and-burn sylvatic areas to use as farmland (Ebel, 2018). Fires, which occasionally get out of control, may also destroy natural habitat, thus enhancing host and bug dispersal (Eastmond and Faust, 2006). Finally, we cannot discard that T. dimidiata also arrive "by chance" to the villages, in search of food sources, or in search of mate, during this season which may correspond to its natural season of dispersal, just because they find villages in their way. ...
... Noteworthy, during the current study, we observed that the warm and dry season also corresponds to the season when the farmers slash-and-burn sylvatic areas to use as farmland (Ebel, 2018). Fires, which occasionally get out of control, may also destroy natural habitat, thus enhancing host and bug dispersal (Eastmond and Faust, 2006). Finally, we cannot discard that T. dimidiata also arrive "by chance" to the villages, in search of food sources, or in search of mate, during this season which may correspond to its natural season of dispersal, just because they find villages in their way. ...
In the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, Triatoma dimidiata is the main vector of Chagas disease. This is a native species in the region that principally inhabits sylvatic habitats. Nevertheless, it shows a tolerant behavior to anthropogenic disturbance, with adult bugs frequently infesting human dwellings, principally during the warm and dry season. Yet, whether the temporal variation of abundance is independent of the habitat and how this is related to the infection rate with Trypanosoma cruzi in Yucatan is still poorly understood. The objective of this study was to simultaneously analyze the temporal variations of T. dimidiata abundance and infection with T. cruzi in domestic and sylvatic habitats from two localities of rural Yucatan (Sudzal, 20°52ʹ19″N, 88°59ʹ20″W and Teya, 21°02ʹ55″N, 89°04ʹ25″W) to help for the further improvement of locally adapted strategies aimed at controlling T. cruzi vector transmission. Using community participation and a combination of different trapping techniques, we collected T. dimidiata bugs during 29 consecutive months within domestic and sylvatic habitats. We then assessed by PCR the infection of the bugs with T. cruzi. Generalized linear models were used to evaluate the effect of climatic variables on the abundance of T. dimidiata and the effect of bug sex, season and habitat on the prevalence of infection with T. cruzi. Overall, 3640 specimens of T. dimidiata were collected. We clearly observed peaks of maximum abundance in both habitats during the warm and dry season and found a negative association of bug abundance with relative humidity. The overall prevalence of infection of the bugs with T. cruzi was 15.2 %. Additionally, bugs collected in domestic habitats displayed a significantly higher prevalence of infection than sylvatic bugs (19.6% vs. 6.1 %, respectively), suggesting an increased risk of T. cruzi transmission related with anthropogenic disturbance. Our study is the first to describe the annual pattern of abundance of T. dimidiata in sylvatic habitats of rural Yucatan and constitutes a contribution to the knowledge of T. dimidiata ecology and of T. cruzi transmission cycle dynamics in the region. In Yucatan, where the use of mosquito nets has shown to be effective to limit human dwelling infestation by T. dimidiata, reinforcing the awareness of local residents about the increased risk of T. cruzi transmission during the warm and dry season when realizing activities in the sylvatic ambient should be, among others, also considered to improve control strategies and limit the risk of vector transmission.
... This has been observed in similar studies in Ethiopia (Bayene et al., 2019) and Tanzania (Jha et al., 2021) where the security and with the use of fire, maintenance, and cleaning techniques, as well as in the selection of species in the implementation of the PUs. In addition, there is relevant evidence for promoting agroforestry designs and strategies in the Yucatan Peninsula (Eastmond & Faust, 2006;Sánchez et al., 2007;García-Frapolli et al., 2008;Oble & Montoya, 2018;Dzib-Castillo et al., 2021). An example is the integration of the milpa with the management of acahuales by adding trees under long-term rotational management (Soto-Pinto et al., 2011). ...
In Mexico, social programs such as Sembrando Vida seek to massively expand agroforestry systems to address the problem of rural poverty and the loss of natural resources. However, little is known regarding program implementation and the response by the beneficiaries within their local context. We explored the local perceptions about the Sembrando Vida program implemented in the X-Hazil Sur Maya community in the state of Quintana Roo in southern Mexico through interviews with beneficiaries and operational personnel of the program and visited production units. Our results show that the program faces practical problems of establishing agroforestry systems and in their long-term maintenance by the local beneficiaries. If public policies are to effectively address poverty and environmental degradation local stakeholders must be involved in the design and planning of long-term strategies.
... Anthropologically, it is caused by a lack of knowledge about forest fires, careless smoking, burned coal in vulnerable areas, honey collection (Butz, 2009), subsistence agricultural system, vision to avoid the incursion of wild pigs in farmland and slash and burn practice for soil fertility and grazing (Eastmond and Faust, 2006). Nepal is not devoid of such forest fires as observed in the Sacred Himalayan Landscape (SHL) in 2009. ...
The research work was focused on the study of forest fire and its impact assessment on plant biodiversity by vegetation assessment in the fire-affected and adjoining non-affected areas to identify the signals of severity and probable causes of fire. Data were collected by quadrate method, site survey, consultation and group discussion, mapping of the studied area, and questionnaire survey. The results show that there was a notable difference in tree and shrub diversity. The Shannon Wienner index (H) = 0.70 and 0.49, and Simpson's Divesity (D) = 0.64 and 0.51, for trees in adjoining and fire-affected areas respectively. Similarly, Shannon Wienner index (H) = 0.91 and 0.72, and Simpson's Divesity (D) = 0.84 and 0.68 for shrubs in adjoining and fire-affected areas respectively. Likewise, herb diversity did not differ significantly (H = 1.02 and 0.97; D = 0.87 and 0.88 in the adjacent to burned area and fire-affected area). Gleichenia gigantea, Artemisia dubia, Rubus spp., Oxalis chodata, and some medicinal plants such as Butea minor were found to be most affected by the fire. Mainly dried thickets of Drepanostachyum intermedium and Saccharum spontaneum act as fuel for the fire, which easily ignites and regenerates soon after a fire. Drought before monsoon was found to be the leading cause of forest fires, followed by electricity shooting (17%), ignorance and carelessness (38%), slash and burn practice (15%), other (7%), and unknown causes (23%). Hence the need to better address the drivers of resource extraction from the national park to mitigate this degradation.
... Understanding the traditional milpa system lies at the crux of debates about past and present Maya agriculture. Few Maya scholars recognize the effective role of fire in management (Hernández Xolocotzi et al., 1995;Eastmond and Faust, 2006;Nigh, 2008;Nigh and Diemont, 2013; see also Peters, 2000;Anderson, 2005;Abrams and Nowacki, 2020;Jurskis et al., 2020) or comprehend the systems' integral role in shaping the landscape (see Conklin, 1957;Dove, 1983Dove, , 1993Van Vliet et al., 2013), even as they negatively cast the milpa cycle as extensive "slash-and-burn" agriculture. The milpa system is based on a hand cultivated polycropping scheme that intimately manages microhabitats for water, drainage, erosion, and soil fertility while selecting and directing perennial succession processes (Chazdon, 2014;Ford and Nigh, 2015; see Robinson and McKillop, 2013;Lentz et al., 2021). ...
Human expansion into and occupation of the New World coincided with the great transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene epoch, yet questions remain about how we detect human presence in the paleoecological record. In the Maya area of southern Mesoamerica, archeological evidence of the human imprint is largely invisible until ∼4,000 years ago. How do environmental changes after that time correspond and relate to human impacts? Are the archeological signatures of initial settlements in the Early Preclassic detected? Later, by ∼2,000 years ago when the Maya had fully settled the landscape, how does the evidence of forest compositional changes relate to human intervention? This paper evaluates published paleoecological data in light of the rise of the Maya civilization and reflects on interpretations of how swidden agriculture and the milpa cycle impacted the environment. Evaluating the contrast between the long archeological sequence of successful Maya development and paleoecological interpretations of destructive human-induced environmental impacts requires a concordance among pollen data, archeological evidence, ethnohistoric observations, ethnological studies of traditional Maya land use, and the historical ecology of the Maya forest today.
... The burning is done for easy hoeing or ploughing of the land for the next cropping [77]. The respondents who indicated that they used fire twice a year for land preparation, may do this on occasions where they have to clear a new place for cropping; the first burning is to clear the bush, then fire is used again to remove stumps of the large woody species as observed by [78] and during the field reconnaissance survey for this study. ...
Understanding people’s practices, knowledge and perceptions of the use of fire and fire regimes can inform fire management plans that could contribute to savanna conservation and sustainable management. We investigated the frequency of fire use, control and perceptions of fire regimes for selected livelihood and socio-cultural activities in six districts in the Guinea savanna of Ghana. The six districts were selected to have a good representation of fire prone areas in the region based on fire frequency data obtained from the CSIR Meraka Institute, South Africa. A multiple regression analysis showed that people’s use of fire for the selected socio-cultural activities from district, occupation, gender, age and ethnic group significantly predicted fire use for the activities R ² = 0.043, F ( 5,498 ) = 5.43, p < 0.000. Age and occupation added significantly to the use of fire. The study revealed that the majority of respondents (83%) across the study districts used fire once a year for at least one of the following activities: land preparation, weed/pest control, burning postharvest stubble, bush clearing around homesteads, firebreaks, charcoal burning and hunting. The study also showed a higher frequency of fire use for land preparation for cropping than for the other activities. Less than a fifth of the respondents (17%) indicated that they do not use fire for any of the selected activities. The majority of respondents (65%) mentioned that they controlled their use of fire to prevent destruction to property or injuring humans. The study revealed a higher frequency of fire use in the dry season for land preparation for cropping. However, respondents rated season of burning as the most important attribute, with little attention to the other attributes of a fire regime, contrary to what is theoretically recognized. Understanding traditional fire use practices in terms of how to regulate the mix of frequency, intensity/severity, season, size and type of fire for these and other socio-cultural purposes could help to mitigate and/or manage bushfires in West African savannas and enhance savanna conservation and management. Hence, the need to better understand people’s knowledge and perceptions of fire regimes in fire assisted socio-cultural practices in West Africa.
... Shifting cultivation also called slash and burn agriculture is a dominant land-use currently covering over 280 million hectares of land across tropical Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Pacific, and the Caribbean, thus providing subsistence for 200-300 million people (Craswell et al., 1997;Cairns and Garrity, 1999;Eastmond and Faust, 2006;Mertz, 2009, Silva et al., 2011Li et al., 2014;Heinimann et al., 2017). Shifting cultivation has been a globally important form of agriculture (Heinimann et al., 2017) central to the culture and livelihoods of millions of people worldwide (Dalle et al., 2011). ...
Shifting cultivation, the oldest farming system of the world and is the dominant land use in mountainous regions of South and Southeast Asia. North-East India (NEI) region, one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, covers 17.2 million ha of land under forests, constituting ~25% of India's total forest area. The population-driven abrupt decline of the fallow period’s duration has aggravated soil erosion, depletion of nutrients, decreased productivity, reduced biodiversity, and weakening of essential ecosystem services. Therefore, the present research aims to explore whether the duration of the fallow period of up to 20-years can restore diversity of tree species, biomass carbon, and ecosystem carbon stock equivalent to those under natural forests. Based on the accessibility and availability of the fallow stands, three categories were selected for the study (1–2, 5–8, and 15–20 years), and these were replicated eight times for each age group. While the 20-years of fallow increased tree diversity, it was still 22% lower than that of the natural forest. Similarly, a 2.7-fold increase in biomass carbon storage was observed with an increase in the fallow period from 5–8-years (33.4 Mg ha-1) to 15–20-years (92.9 Mg ha-1), yet the latter was 40% lower than that under the natural forests. The very labile and labile carbon stocks decreased with an increase in the fallow period. In contrast, the less labile and non-labile carbon stocks increased with increase in the fallow age. Because of the absence of a long fallow management system in the region, and to minimize the risks of ecosystem carbon degradation, adopting an integrated approach is recommended to enhance the ecological integrity of the degraded lands under shifting cultivation while also improving the livelihood of the shifting cultivators.
... Shifting cultivation also called slash and burn agriculture is a dominant land-use currently covering over 280 million hectares of land across tropical Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Pacific, and the Caribbean, thus providing subsistence for 200-300 million people (Craswell et al., 1997;Cairns and Garrity, 1999;Eastmond and Faust, 2006;Mertz, 2009, Silva et al., 2011Li et al., 2014;Heinimann et al., 2017). Shifting cultivation has been a globally important form of agriculture (Heinimann et al., 2017) central to the culture and livelihoods of millions of people worldwide (Dalle et al., 2011). ...
Shifting cultivation is a globally important form of agriculture covering over 280 million hectares in the tropic, but it has often been blamed for deforestation and forest degradation. In North East India (NEI) it has been practiced for millennia and it is an important element of the cultural identity of indigenous communities. It is often practiced on slopping lands with fragile soils (mostly Acrisols), which are prone to rapid degradation with cultivation. The shortened fallow cycle as practised currently is ecologically unsustainable and economically not viable. This study aimed to quantify (i) changes in soil bulk density, aggregate stability and compaction in relation to chronosequence and soil depth, (ii) changes in the proportion of macro, meso, and micro aggregates and associated soil organic carbon (SOC) content in relation to soil depth and fallow chronosequence, and (iii) determine the minimum fallow length that achieves SOC stocks comparable with adjacent intact forest land. The proportion of soil macro-aggregates and meso-aggregates significantly varied with land-use and soil depth as well as their interactive effects. Across all soil depths, forest land had the highest proportion of macro-aggregates (75.6%), while the currently cultivated land had the least proportion (51.1%). The SOC contents in macro-aggregates increased with fallow age and decreased with soil depth; highest (1.95%) being in the top 10 cm soil of 20 years old fallows and the lowest (0.39%) in 21-30 cm depth of 5 years old fallows. Multivariate analysis identified bulk density and porosity as the most important variables to discriminate between land use practices. The analysis provided evidence for significant changes in soil compaction, aggregate stability and SOC content with the transition from undisturbed forest to slash-and-burn cultivation and fallow phases. It is concluded that a minimum of 20 years of fallow period is required to achieve SOC content and C stocks comparable with intact forest land.
... Green manuring and hydrogel application already have been tested in forestry and agriculture to provide weed control, maximize water availability, and improve microclimatic and edaphic conditions (Spencer & Faust 2006;Teasdale et al. 2007;Crous 2017;Agbede et al. 2018;Mudhanganyi et al. 2018); however, its potential beneficial effects on tree species performances in direct seeding techniques for forest restoration have not been studied yet. Therefore, we investigated (1) the effects of green manure and hydrogel soil amendment alone, or in combination, on seedling emergence, establishment, survival, and the early growth of native tree species used in a direct seeding system for the restoration of the tropical seasonal forest; and (2) how green manure affects the initial weed coverage in the study plots. ...
Although direct tree seeding may be a potentially useful restoration practice, many biotic and abiotic barriers prevent seedling emergence and early development, reducing its success and applicability. To overcome these barriers, we undertook a field experiment to test the effects of using green manure and hydrogel alone, or in combination, on seedling performances of 14 native tree species that were planted by direct seeding in a deforested tropical seasonal forest area in southern Brazil and to examine how green manure affected the initial weed coverage in the study plots. We evaluated competing vegetation coverage and tree seedling emergence and early development for two years after sowing. Weed infestation was significantly higher in the experimental plots with no green manure; however, neither green manure nor hydrogel improved tree seedling emergence and early development at any time of measurement. Our results suggest that the use of green manure and hydrogel alone or in combination, were not effective in guaranteeing direct seeding success, however, green manure can be an effective method to reduce weed infestation. Direct seeding techniques for tree species still need to be improved in order to restore tropical seasonal forests on a larger scale.
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