Andrea Martínez-Ballesté

• PhD
• Researcher at National Autonomous University of Mexico

Background The commercialization of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) provides income for rural indigenous households. The integration of NTFPs into formal markets tends to intensify management practices to ensure production and monetary benefits. However, more research is needed to understand the motivations for managing of commercialized species...

Ethnobiology analyzes the interactions between people and their surrounding environments from various perspectives. Some studies have been criticized by social scientists, who argue that ethnobiologists have insufficiently considered the conflicts between the dominant economic and political model and rural communities’ lives, which are often ideali...

The ecological mechanisms that contribute to maintaining plant populations have been exhaustively examined worldwide, but the relative quantification of the effects of anthropogenic processes on these mechanisms in tropical dioecious tree species has not yet been performed. The aim of this study was to analyze the effects of debarking on the sex ra...

La etnobiología es una disciplina científica que estudia las relaciones entre las sociedades humanas y su entorno natural desde una perspectiva cultural y biológica. Se centra en el conocimiento tradicional de diferentes culturas acerca de las plantas, animales y ecosistemas, así como en cómo las comunidades utilizan y gestionan los recursos natura...

The Sierra Negra region is a rich mosaic of ecosystems and cultures in interaction. There, people practice a pattern of multiple use and management of the different plant species and vegetation types occurring in their communitarian territories and, through interchange, those of other communities of the region. Due to a complex socio-ecological his...

This chapter shows a general panorama of ethnobotanical research and information generated during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries among Mexican cultures, according to the database Base de Datos Etnobotánicos de Plantas Mexicanas (BADEPLAM) of the Botanical Garden at the Institute of Biology, UNAM. This is the most complete database with et...

Este artículo corresponde a un número especial publicado en La Jornada del Campo: "El bosque y su gente", en el cual se pretende, mediante la visibilización de diversos artículos interconectados, expresar la variabilidad en las respuestas locales-regionales asociadas al uso y manejo de los recursos forestales maderables y no maderables a lo largo y...

The interactive effects of anthropogenic disturbance and climatic variables can shape the demography of plant populations, but they remain poorly understood especially for long-lived species like tropical trees. Understanding these interactions is critical for designing forest management strategies in the face of both growing anthropogenic pressure...

Las infografías aquí presentes tienen un propósito múltiple: Primero, 1) como material didáctico, 2) herramienta pedagógica y 3) vehículo de comunicación en la consulta previa, libre e informada y, finalmente, 4) como vehículo gráfico de apoyo en el diálogo de saberes.

“Eco-symbiotic complementarity” refers to mechanisms of reciprocal support among people settled in different ecological zones to access zone-specific useful products. We evaluated eco-symbiotic complementarity and how socio-spatial marginality influences the exchange of natural products between Nahua communities in the municipality of Coyomeapan an...

Changes in climate are important for agriculture and the livelihoods it sustains. To improve the understanding of how climate vulnerability is expressed in agricultural environments, it is necessary to address how people perceive and interact with their surroundings. This study analyzes farmers’ perceptions of a set of climate change indicators and...

Commercial harvests can threaten tree species harvested for their bark. Amphipterygium adstringens is a dioecious tree, endemic to the tropical dry forests of Mexico, where it is intensively harvested for its medicinal bark. Limited information hinders developing sustainable management strategies for A. adstringens. We assessed bark regeneration fo...

Background: Pollinators are key for the survival of a great percentage of angiosperm species and 75 % of production from cultivated species is expected to decrease in the absence of pollinators. Questions: The goal of this study is to understand the role of agricultural management and local knowledge on pollination for the conservation of differen...

The Neolithic Revolution narrative associates early-mid Holocene domestications with the development of agriculture that fueled the rise of late Holocene civilizations. This narrative continues to be influential, even though it has been deconstructed by archaeologists and geneticists in its homeland. To further disentangle domestication from relian...

Wild species collected in Mexico are important resources for the subsistence of its inhabitants. Particularly in the arid and semi-arid regions of northeastern Mexico, where agriculture and livestock are limited by climatic conditions, human groups that inhabit these sites depend on the rich diversity of its flora and fauna. The largest desert in N...

Se documenta la estructura poblacional y el patrón de distribución y correlación espacial entre etapas de desarrollo de Hintonia latiflora, especie amenazada en México por la cosecha comercial de su corteza. Se establecieron seis unidades de muestreo (tres cosechadas y tres no cosechadas) de 20 m × 100 m para el censo de todas las plantas y se cate...

Chronic anthropogenic disturbance (CAD), characterized by low‐intensity but high frequency, is a major driver of environmental degradation in developing countries. CAD is a mixture of disturbance sensu stricto (DSS), that is, plant biomass removal and stress that reduces biomass production due to changes in environmental conditions. However, we sti...

The term Anthropocene has been suggested to describe the epoch in which changes in Earth systems can be clearly attributable to human activities. The oasis ecosystems of the Baja California Peninsula provide a good example of the transformations that human activities can produce in an ecosystem over centuries of use. These sites, which are located...

The Balsas River Basin (BRB) area is the major source of wild medicinal plants commercially sold in Mexico; thus, the region is important in the conservation of these high-demand resources. We studied wild medicinal plant species extracted from the BRB to document the species richness of traded plants and analyze the commercialization dynamics and...

Climate change and land use/land cover change (LULCC) are associated with local vulnerability, defined as the intrinsic tendency of a system to be negatively affected by an event or phenomenon, but this can be ameliorated by ecosystem conservation. In Mexico, extensive Wildlife Management Units (eWMUs) are environmental policy instruments designed...

More than half of the natural vegetation in Mexico is managed collectively within common property systems. The appropriation and continuity of government programs related to the conservation of land that is communally used is proposed to depend on the level of organization of the communities and the interaction between the local and governmental in...

The sustainability of a homegarden can be evaluated not only as its species richness and eco-systemic role, but also as the result of management practices affecting resource sustainability. Sabal spp. have been managed since Colonial times into homegardens, at present, its mature leaves are mostly used in roof building of traditional Mayan homes. A...

Malaria is a parasitic disease caused by organisms of the genus Plasmodium. The present study examined wild and cultivated plants used to treat malaria and associated symptoms by riparian communities in the Municipalities of Pauini and Xapuri in Amazonas and Acre states, respectively. During the year 2013 86 persons were interviewed in 9 rural comm...

Traditional management practices are usually thought to be sustainable. The Maya manage Sabal (Arecaceae) palms in homegardens, using their leaves for thatching. The sustainability of such production systems depends on the long-term persistence of palm populations, whereas resource availability also depends on the number of leaves on individual pal...

The Consequences of Harvesting on Regeneration of a Non-timber Wax Producing Species ( Euphorbia antisyphilitica Zucc.) of the Chihuahuan Desert. For two centuries large quantities of non-timber candelilla (Euphorbia antisyphilitica Zucc., Euphorbiaceae) have been harvested from wild populations in northern Mexico. The wax that candelilla produces...

Homegarden biodiversity

La extracción representa un factor de afectación directa de las poblaciones silvestres de flora y fauna en México. En este capítulo se analiza la magnitud de la extracción de especies vegetales y animales para consumo, para comercialización local y por tráfico ilegal, así como las sinergias entre factores de impacto directo e indirecto. También se...

Palm leaves are an important resource for family households. The effect of harvest on leaf production, growth and fecundity of wild individual palm trees has been studied, but little is known about palm harvest in agro-forestry systems. In the Maya area of the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, leaves of the xa’an palm (Sabal yapa, and Sabal mexicana) have...

Home gardens are productive systems associated with the home that contribute to the upkeep of important ecological functions and to the social and economic welfare of thousands of families. This chapter describes Latin American home gardens in terms of their ecological, economic and social sustainability; we also briefly review their history. We re...

Home gardens are productive systems associated with the home that contribute to the upkeep of important ecological functions and to the social and economic welfare of thousands of families. This chapter describes Latin American home gardens in terms of their ecological, economic and social sustainability;we also briefly review their history. We rev...

"Sabal palm has been used for thatching the traditional Maya house for over 3000 yr. The great importance of this resource has promoted its management within home gardens. Although traditionally managed populations in home gardens are capable of ecological long-term persistence, the impact of cultural change on sustainable resource management is po...

"Xa'an palm (Sabal yapa) has been used to thatch traditional Maya houses for over 3000 years. In the Yucatan Peninsula, this palm has been introduced to pasturelands, maize fields (milpas), and homegardens. These and other traditional management systems are usually believed to be sustainable, but there is as yet little evidence to support this hypo...

www.cifor.org/ntfpcd/pdf/Riches-Latin.PDF‎

La hoja de palma de guano (Sabal spp.) ha sido el principal material para techar la vivienda de los mayas yucatecos. El uso de esta palma, particularmente S. yapa, en los techos de instalaciones turísticas en la corta del Mar Caribe, creó un mercado potencial para este producto forestal durante las últimas décadas. Estudios ecológicos en el ejido X...

Xa'an palms (Sabal spp., Arecaceae), have been a multipurpose plant resource for the Maya culture of Yucatan for well over 3,000 years. They provide thatch, raw materials for handicrafts as well as emergency food, medicines, household utensils and other products for the household economy. Some of the present uses of xa'an probably originated in pre...