Impact of climatic change in forests and natural protected areas of Mexico

An assessment was made in order to determine the vulnerability of Mexico's forest ecosystems to climate change, according to the results of two General Circulation Models (GCMs): CCCM and GFDL-R30. These GCMs were made available for the study within the Country Study Program (U.S. Country Studies Program, 1994). Holdridge's life zones classification was used for this analysis. This work displays the climatic differences for each model and for different regions of Mexico. Climate scenarios were compared to current climate so as to notice climate change regions for each model. The main natural protected areas, as well as the Pones of the country with the most important forest exploitation areas were located in order to assess those that could be affected by climate change. Of the 18 life zones reported for the country, the most affected ones would be the temperate cold and warm forests, tending to disappear. On the contrary, tropical dry, very dry and thorn forests, with warm affinities tend to widen their current surfaces, according to the CCCM model. The GFDL-R30 model foresees increases in the distribution of tropical, humid and wet forests, which would be favored by the increase in rainfall, giving place to Tropical Rain Forests, currently non-existent in the country. Of the 33 natural protected areas used; for this study, 24 show changes in their life zones, the most affected ones are those found in the northern and occidental regions of the country. The most affected forest industries would be those located in the Sierra Madre Occidental, in the states of Durango and Chihuahua, and to the occidental part of the country, the industries found in Michoacan and Jalisco.