Biodiversity conservation, traditional agriculture and ecotourism: Land cover/land use change projections for a natural protected area in the northeastern Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico

In addition to preserving ecosystems and biodiversity, natural protected areas (NPAs) in Mexico are homelands for people, largely indigenous, who traditionally base their resource management on a multiple use strategy. We analyzed land use and land cover changes in the Otoch Ma'ax Yetel Kooh NPA in the northeastern Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, where Yucatec Maya recently incorporated ecotourism to their set of economic activities. We evaluated changes in land use using vegetation maps from 1999 to 2003 and predicted vegetation cover in 2011 by developing a cellular automata and Markovian chains model. We observed slight increases in the area covered by medium stages of secondary succession, while new milpa plots appeared in areas of all succession stages. We used three scenarios to predict land cover in 2011: (a) milpa agriculture implemented at the same rate; (b) milpa agriculture decreases due to the growing demand of ecotourism; and (c) milpa agriculture disappears due to parceling of communally owned land. All scenarios predict slight increases in the area covered by secondary succession at the expense of milpas or younger stages of succession, with no major differences between the three predictive scenarios. Our results provide guidelines for managing the NPA, suggesting that biodiversity conservation, traditional agriculture and ecotourism are compatible activities.