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De Jong, B.H.J., S. Ochoa-Gaona, M.A. Castillo-Santiago, N. Ramírez-Marcial, and M.A. Cairns. 2000. Carbon flux and patterns of land-use/land-cover change in the Selva Lacandona, Mexico. Ambio 29(8)504-511.
Based on land-use/land cover (LU/LC) maps for the 1970s and satellite imagery for the 1990s, we estimate LU/LC change and associated C fluxes in three subregions of the Selva Lacandona, Chiapas, Mexico. The total area of closed forest was reduced by 31%, whereas secondary forests expanded more than ninefold, secondary shrubs by almost sixfold, and cultivated land and pasture areas expanded 21% and 92% respectively. However, the LU/LC change was not uniformly distributed over the entire study area. Total mean C densities ranged from 452 Mg C ha-1 for closed mature forests to a low of 120 MG C ha-1 for pasture. The heavily converted areas lost an estimated 24% of their total 1976 C pools, whereas the low impacted region lost only 3%.