Co-producing a spatial toolkit to navigate pathways to sustainable land systems in Mexico

Alma Mendoza has started work as a postdoctoral researcher with María Piquer-Rodríguez and Martha Bonilla Moheno on a project to identify the main characteristics that underlie the patterns and dynamics of the Social-Ecological Land Systems (SELS) in Mexico.

"This is an exciting opportunity because it expands on the expertise of our working group on mapping social-ecological land systems for Latin America,” says Piquer-Rodríguez, one of the coordinators of GLP’s SELS of Latin America Working Group.

The characterization of SELS in a rich biological and cultural country is a challenge, but it provides an opportunity to identify priorities and tradeoffs in specific contexts to tackle sociological issues like land use/cover change, loss of biodiversity, food security, and climate change. One of the main boosters of this project is to identify leverage points and model them to project future sustainable pathways for the SELS in Mexico.

This project will also forge new collaborations between international institutions and will allow me to build up on my spatial modeling expertise,” according to Mendoza, who will work on the project for two years.