Abstract

RIOJA-NIETO, Rodolfo; MORENO-RUIZ, Juan Antonio  and  GOMEZ-VALDES, José. Effect of the management of a Natural Protected Area in the landscape of the mangrove forest in the Yucatán Peninsula. Hidrobiológica [online]. 2015, vol.25, n.2, pp.203-211. ISSN 0188-8897.

Natural Protected Areas (NPAs) are one of the main conservation tools used to maintain biodiversity. Due to the limitations on the anthropogenic activities that are generally associated with these tools, it is important to determine their efficiency in order to justify and/or modify their operation. This study evaluates the effect of the management of the "El Palmar" state reserve, which was established 23 years ago, by comparing the landscape characteristics of the mangrove forest of the Natural Protected Area (NPA) and the adjacent area that has no historical conservation status. A Geographic Information System (GIS) was used, as well as remote sensing techniques, based on the hierarchical analysis of quantitative characteristics of the habitat, the spectral similarity, contextual edition and the supervised classification of a multispectral Spot 5 image, to compare the area, fragmentation and compactness of ten types of mangrove habitats between the NPA and the adjacent area. The contrasted regions present the same general fragmentation pattern (p>0.05). However, when comparing the types of habitat, significant differences were observed (p<0.05) in the fragmentation, the area and the compactness of certain types of habitat. The observed differences do not indicate a clear effect of the protected area management strategies in the structure of the landscape and are possibly more related to the local conditions, ecological processes, and the natural and/or anthropogenic disturbances. Our results highlight the importance of adjusting the management strategies of the NPA in such a manner that they have a positive effect in the integrity of the mangrove's forest.

Keywords : "El Palmar" State Reserve; Geographic Information System; landscape; mangrove forest.

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