Human interactions with the environment can enhance biodiversity

What is it about?

Many of the biodiversity hotspots are locales of traditional land use systems. Drawing from the intermediate disturbance hypothesis, we propose the human–environment mediation that acts in much the same way as the intermediate disturbance hypothesis. One great example is the Maya Forest, where the ancient Maya domesticate the landscape with the milpa-forest garden cycle, where asynchronous cropping (misunderstood as shifting agriculture) promotes regeneration for perennial resources of fruit, medicine, fiber, and construction. These traditional systems are founded on biodiversity by building soil fertility, lowering temperature, conserving water, managing erosion, and controlling fire.

Featured Image

Photo by Guido HN on Unsplash

Photo by Guido HN on Unsplash

Why is it important?

We advocate for a broader biocultural framework to move from considering human interventions as disturbance to an understanding of human– environment mediations. Our proposed biocultural hypothesis acknowledges that, in certain cultural contexts, interventions by Homo sapiens at different at the landscape level may lower alpha diversity yet can generate peaks in beta and gamma biodiversity compared to reference ecosystems.

Perspectives