Abstract

GARCIA ROMERO, Arturo; MENDOZA ROBLES, Karla Ivette  and  GALICIA SARMIENTO, Leopoldo. Evaluation of tropical deciduous forest landscapes, lower Papagayo river basin (Guerrero), Mexico. Invest. Geog [online]. 2005, n.56, pp.77-100. ISSN 2448-7279.

Actually, there is an extended interest of the landscape value as an alternative of environment analysis, however, it has been few used in ecosystems of Mexico. The objective of this study was to determine the value of the landscape in tropical dry forests of Papagayo low basin, Guerrero, Mexico. The classification of landscapes hierarchy was carried and a quality index based on four indicators was applied: slope's sensitivity, fragmentation, physiognomic quality and social signify. The results show that the area is constituted by three landscape systems -mountains, hills and alluvial plains- defined by the morpho-structures and bioclimatic changes, 17 landscape subsystems and 16 elemental landscapes, defined by vegetation, land use and perturbation. The landscapes' value is variable, even it has to increase in the mountainous subsystems with tropical dry forests and temperate forests, which are more sensitive and inaccessible, so that the social interest and the fragmentation levels reduce and enable more physiognomic quality. In the hills subsystems with tropical dry forests, the morphology is flat to favor the increase of accessibility and fragmentation, which correlates with changes in the local distribution of the social and economic development. The method allows synthesize the balance among the environmental degradation and the characters of the cultural appropriation of the landscape in large spatial scales.

Keywords : Landscape Ecology; tropical dry forest; land use; fragmentation; landscape value.