Assessing the impact of three biosphere reserves on the conservation of coastal ecosystems.

ABSTRACT

Biosphere Reserves (BR) manage large territories with diverse natural covers and land uses to preserve biodiversity, promote local development and preserve ecosystems. This study evaluated how their zoning (buffer and core) and policy timeframes (decree period, management plan period, and land planning period) influence four landscape management outcomes: deforestation, natural cover recovery, and anthropic and natural permanence. For three Mexican BR case studies, land use and cover transitions were calculated and compared to contrafactual sites. Observed rates of land cover change were marginal within all three BR zoning and across their policy timeframe (<0.02 % change rate), suggesting that BR effectively promote the permanence of both natural and anthropic covers. Nevertheless, the predicted probability of uncommon deforestation and recovery outcomes at local levels showed that the effect of a BR over its regulated landscape is not spatiotemporally static, contrasting the effect of individual allocation vs a group or network. Poverty, land tenure, agriculture aptitude and distance to markets adds to this dynamic and is modelled and discussed. This study shows that BR zoning schemes and its regulatory sequence influence the rates of land cover change and the predicted probability of landscape management outcomes across space and time.