Resource information
A "forest-hydrology-poverty
nexus" hypothesis asserts that deforestation in poor
upland areas simultaneously threatens biodiversity and
increases the incidence of flooding, sedimentation, and
other damaging hydrological processes. The authors use rough
heuristics to assess the applicability of this hypothesis to
Central America. They do so by using a simple rule of thumb
to identify watersheds at greater risk of hydrologically
significant land use change: these are watersheds where
there is a relatively large interface between agriculture
and forest, and where this interface is on a steep slope.
The authors compare the location of these watersheds with
spatial maps of poverty and forests (for Guatemala and
Honduras) and with maps of population and forests (for
Central America at large). The analysis is performed for
watersheds defined at different scales. The authors find
plausible evidence for a forest-biodiversity-poverty
connection in Guatemala, and to a lesser extent in Honduras.
In the rest of Central America, there are relatively few
areas where forest meets agriculture on steep slopes-either
the forest or the slopes are lacking. And the ratio of these
forest/agriculture/hillside interfaces to watershed area
declines markedly as larger-scale watersheds are considered.
This directs attention to relatively small watersheds for
further investigation of the "nexus."
