Local patterns of global changes: emigration effects in land use change in central Mexico. Case study in the Cuitzeo’s watershed, Mexico

Abstract

Nowadays important displacement of people are produced by poverty, wars, environmental degradation, between others, they are 125,000 millions of human beings on the Earth, who lives out of their original countries. In this research the implications of Mexican emigrations on land cover and land use change. A case study is in the Cuitzeo’s lake watershed, Michoacan (Mexico). Socio-environmental characteristics in this area are representatives of the high rural emigration areas in central Mexico. The clearest evidence at regional level of the process under study is the increase of the shrubland areas previously cover by rainfed agriculture and urban growth. The results are associated with “dismantling” processes (procesos de desmantelamiento) of territories, consequently communities, localities and landscape lost.