The Lacandon Maya is an indigenous group who live in Chiapas, Mexico. Their traditional lifeways involve swidden, sequential agroforestry management that mimics ecological disturbance and modifies succession. Lacandon farmers use fire to clear small plots for polyculture milpa agroforests, which they subsequently fallow. They actively manage all stages of their agroforests to provide ecosystem services and facilitate site recovery. However, it is unclear whether or how quickly the ecosystem structure of Lacandon agroforests matches that of a mature forest. Therefore, this study quantified canopy cover, basal area, ground cover, and litter layers and depth to empirically evaluate successional trends in vegetation and litter structure. Our results show that the Lacandon agroforest structure typically recovers to mature forest levels, but the speed and nature of this recovery vary by metric. They also indicate Lacandon traditional agroforestry is predicated on nuanced understanding of tropical forest successional dynamics, as illustrated by Lacandon farmers’ recognition of successional stages that correspond to patterns in vegetation and leaf litter structure. As such, Lacandon ecological knowledge has the potential to facilitate the restoration of degraded tropical forests in Chiapas, Mexico. However, our findings also demonstrate that shortening fallow periods will undermine the ecological integrity of this traditional agricultural system.

Lacandon Maya是居住在墨西哥恰帕斯州的一个土著群体。他们的传统生活方式涉及模仿生态扰乱和改变演替的错综复杂的顺序农林业管理。Lacandon农民用火清理混养米尔帕的小块土地农林，他们随后休耕。他们积极管理其农林的各个阶段，以提供生态系统服务并促进场地恢复。但是，尚不清楚拉康登农林的生态系统结构与成熟森林的生态系统结构是否匹配或匹配的速度如何。因此，本研究量化了冠层的覆盖面积，基础面积，地面覆盖以及凋落物的层数和深度，以凭经验评估植被和凋落物结构的演替趋势。我们的结果表明，拉肯登（Lagandon）农林结构通常会恢复到成熟的森林水平，但是这种恢复的速度和性质因指标而异。它们还表明Lacandon传统农林业以对热带森林演替动态的细致理解为基础，如Lacandon农民对演替阶段的认识所对应的，演替阶段对应于植被和凋落物结构的模式。因此，Lacandon生态知识具有促进墨西哥恰帕斯州退化的热带森林恢复的潜力。但是，我们的发现还表明，休耕期的缩短将破坏这种传统农业系统的生态完整性。