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TNC Project
IABIN Project
Land Cover Project
MesoAmerican Workshop
Caribbean Workshop
Puerto Rico
In the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, rapid land-use changes over the past century have included recent land-cover conversion to urban/built-up lands. Observations of this land development adjacent to reserves or replacing dense forest call into question how the changes relate to forests or reserved lands. This study uses existing maps and statistical modeling to summarize island-wide land-cover change between 1977-78 and 1991-92 and forest cover and change to urban/built-up lands by ecological zone. Results indicate that 1) pasture is more likely to undergo land development than shrubland plus forest with low canopy density, 2) forest condition and conservation status appear unimportant in that development locations neither distinguish between classes of forest canopy development nor relate to forest patch size or reserve proximity, and 3) most land development occurs in the least-protected ecological zones. Outside the boundaries of strictly protected forest and other reserves, accessibility, proximity to existing urban areas, and perhaps desirable natural settings, serve to increase land development.
