Land use in the southern Yucatán peninsular region of Mexico: Scenarios of population and institutional change

Land-use and land-cover change, human activity that results in altered land-use systems and surface features, defines the environmental and socioeconomic sustainability of communities around the globe. It is a key response to global environmental change in addition to being both a key cause and medium of this change. This article examines an application of the Southern Yucatán Peninsular Region Integrated Assessment (SYPRIA), a scenario-based spatially explicit model designed to examine and project land use in Mexico. SYPRIA combines Geographic Information Systems (GIS) with agent-based modeling, cellular modeling, and genetic programming. The application examined here explores the effects on land-use and land-cover projections of scenarios that rely on varying assumptions pertaining to population growth, land-use trends, role of agrarian technology, and effects of resource institutions. This work also highlights the importance of understanding the many factors influencing land use, particularly population, different production systems, and the contextual nature of resource institutions in determining the nature of land use.