Ecological assessment of thirty-six land-use decisions: the case of the Coiba Penal Island, Panama (1847-2014)

Abstract

Land-abuse produces environmental crisis, yet there are locations like the Coiba Island where forests re-grow rapidly despite more than 80 years of mass agriculture. In order to discover why, we reviewed the history of Coiba (1847–2014) while writing out the main land-use decisions that were executed, and analyzing them under the scope of their geographical context. Out of 36 decisions, 35 were not in contraposition with-, but even took advantage from the conditions of the topography, climate, geology, position respect to the sea and rivers, as well as from the estuarine-and-coastal wildlife. Just only the removal of soil using a bulldozer generated a novel ecosystem while the rest of the decisions did not precluded a fast, post-abandonment secondary succession for the 20,46% of the 503km² of island’s surface that were devoted to livestock (>900cows.y^-1), rice (>752Mg.y^-1), among other items to be sent to mainland Panama. Meanwhile, the remaining 79,54% of Coiba’s lands remained covered by mature forest protecting the watersheds and the gradual movement of soil nutrients towards the cultivated areas. Our results confirm that it is possible to massively produce food per decades provided that the environmental constraints and the forests are respected.