Spatial Anaysis and Modelling to Mappping Priorities Areas for Restauration: Study Case: Natural Protected Area Montes Azules, Chiapas, Mexico

Abstract

Natural Protected Areas play a fundamental role in the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystems throughout the world and are designated and managed with the purpose of preserving biological and cultural capital, ensuring the sustainable use of natural resources, and maintaining ecosystem services. The Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, like other Natural Protected in Mexico, faces significant challenges such as deforestation, illegal logging, and loss of vegetation cover, as well as socio-environmental conflicts, factors that hinder the biological and cultural conservation of the area. Likewise, despite their importance, many Natural Protected face significant challenges in terms of effective monitoring and planning. The lack of adequate monitoring and planning strategies, as well as staff and budget, makes it difficult to assess the conservation status of these areas and to implement appropriate management measures. Therefore, creating specific monitoring tools is essential to periodically evaluate their conservation status and identify threats and pressures on ecosystems in order to design adaptive and effective management strategies. The objective of this study is to offer a first methodological approach to identify priority areas for restoration within the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, which will allow decision-makers to design and apply conservation strategies in the area. The determination of the priority areas for restoration was based on an environmental management process, where the Land suitability is the base for the territorial arrangement, which was modeled together with the current land use and land cover through rules of decision and having the natural protected area as a frame. For land suitability, the land classification system was used according to its  use capacity or American system of the 8 classes developed by the Soil Conservation Service of  the United States; for mapping land use land cover, an object base classification method  was used. The total transformed area in 2023 occupies an extension of 39,475.38 ha, approximately 50% of this lands corresponds to sloping and very steep land and in some cases with shallow to very shallow soils, not suitable for agriculture. The area identified as priority zones for restoration corresponds to an extension of 19,514.5 ha, which represents nearly 50% of the transformed area, and 6% of the total of study area, from which 6,860.5 ha are top priority for restoration. As main conclusion can be said that the methodological proposal described here serves as a first approximation to identify priority zones for restoration in the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, allowing for a more detailed identification of these areas at the local level, which will allow decision-makers to design and apply conservation strategies in the area.