Impacts of land use and cultural change in a fragile environment: Indigenous acculturation and deforestation in Kavanayen, Gran Sabana, Venezuela

Though it has been widely asserted that recent deforestation in the Gran Sabana is a result of intensified shifting cultivation, no supporting community-specific data oil rates of vegetation and land use changes has previously been provided. Mapping of vegetation and land use in Kavanayen, the largest indigenous community in the Gran Sabana, and comparison with similar earlier data, indicate that in areas of intensive cultivation there has in fact been substantial forest loss and deflection to secondary none forest vegetation. The deforestation in these valleys is directly associated with intensive agriculture and abbreviation of the fallow period and indirectly with the increasing use of fire that accompanies cultivation and the increase in combustible secondary vegetation. Changes in the indigenous culture, namely; increases in population size and density and, for sonic cultivators, changes in agricultural site selection characteristics that now emphasize logistical as opposed to the more traditional environmental factors, are intimately connected with the more to more spatially and temporally intensified cultivation arid the resultant deforestation in the fallow period.