Item – Thèses Canada

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Numéro d'OCLC
909903325
Lien(s) vers le texte intégral
Exemplaire de BAC
Exemplaire de BAC
Auteur
Wilson, Sarah,
Titre
Replanting a future : restoring cloud forests, biodiversity and rural livelihoods in Andean landscapes
Diplôme
Ph. D. -- McGill University, 2015
Éditeur
[Montreal] : McGill University Libraries, [2015]
Description
1 online resource
Notes
Thesis supervisor: Oliver T Coomes (Supervisor).
Includes bibliographical references.
Résumé
"Can community-based tree planting effectively restore and conserve biodiverse cloud forest in the Andes? This dissertation seeks to answer this question through a multi-site study in the Intag Valley in northwest Ecuador, a heavily deforested global biodiversity 'hotspot.' Here, working with a local NGO, communities began planting trees to restore cloud forests in the early 2000s. I visited Intag in 2010 and 2011, where, using mixed methods from the natural and social sciences, I quantified local land-use and -cover changes with satellite images from 1991, 2001, and 2010; compared tree diversity in multiple patches of primary, planted, and naturally regenerating forest; and assessed community participation in cloud forest replanting based on household interviews, focus groups and oral histories in four communities. These analyses enabled me to answer four related questions: 1) do communities reforest and deforest simultaneously?; 2) how heterogeneous are tree communities in remnant Andean cloud forests, and what strategies are needed to conserve landscape biodiversity?; 3) can community-based restoration accelerate cloud forest recovery?; and, 4) who participates in tree planting, why do they choose to do so, and does it benefit their lives and livelihoods? Results indicate that deforestation slowed considerably between 2001 and 2010. Although people continued to clear primary forest in the highlands, forests regrew around communities, resulting in a net cover increase - a local 'forest transition.' This spatial shift in forests is partly explained by people's reasons for restoring them. Following deforestation, a decline in key ecosystem services - especially water - threatened their ability to farm, spurring people to work with a local NGO to plant trees in communal watershed reserves. Many households then applied newly acquired arboricultural knowledge and techniques on their farms, implementing innovative tree-based systems to restore soils and water availability. Tree planting accelerated forest recovery, increasing tree diversity and 'jump-starting' succession in communal reserves. But young planted forests, with their high proportion of locally useful species, are still 'novel' in this landscape, remaining ecologically distinct from the highly diverse and spatially variable primary forests. So, can restoration be 'win-win' for cloud forests and Andean farmers? In heavily deforested regions, the answer suggested by this study is 'yes.' Restoration has limitations - results suggest that it cannot replace, nor assure, the conservation of primary cloud forests. But because restoration ultimately aided forest recovery, increased tree diversity, and had high participation rates, this case study identifies a number of important synergies between rural livelihoods and biodiversity conservation mediated through the practice of cultivating trees. Driven by local ecosystem service scarcity, this 'crisis restoration' was an integral part of a local movement to renew and sustain farming culture, and created forests for which people feel a sense of stewardship, ownership and pride. This model of restoration thus holds considerable potential to benefit rural farmers and restore biodiversity across the many heavily deforested regions of the Andes."--
Autre lien(s)
digitool.Library.McGill.CA
digitool.library.mcgill.ca
escholarship.mcgill.ca
escholarship.mcgill.ca
Sujet
Social Sciences - Geography