Dinámica de cambio del ecosistema manglar para el período 1990-2018 en el archipiélago de Jambelí, provincia de El Oro

Abstract

The devastation of the mangroves as a result of the productive practices of industries such as shrimp farming, is a conflict that regains strength over the years. Since the beginning of the shrimp farming activities in Ecuador, the great reception it received abroad as a shrimp exporting country is undoubted, but the coastal ecosystems have undergone accelerated negative changes as evidenced in the coverage and use of the land in the Archipiélago de Jambelí. Under this context, it was considered necessary to study the dynamics of change exerted in the Archipelago during 1990-2018, from a focus on the expansion of the shrimp sector, through a qualitative-quantitative analysis. The structure of the investigation consists of three chapters; the first shows the most relevant characteristics of the mangrove, the factors that affect its degradation and the consequences derived specifically from shrimp exploitation. There are even some types of control and conservation strategies for the ecosystem, used inside and outside the country. In addition, emphasis is placed on the results of coverage area, net change, profit-loss, reforestation rates and deforestation. For the second section, an ecotourism plan is proposed as a proposal that responds to the most relevant conflicts, identified on the island, and works as a means of improvement for the environmental, economic and social aspects of the communities to intervene. It consists of a diagnosis of the sites and resources of interest, the design and development of the elements of the plan, and the methods for promoting the route offered. Finally, the third section demonstrates the feasibility of implementing the proposal from an environmental, social, technical and economic perspective. The work has a descriptive and exploratory approach, based on a qualitative-quantitative methodology that includes scientific literature review and university repositories, which served for the structuring of the theoretical bases, methodological models, justification of results and elaboration of the ecotourism plan based on previous examples. Specifically, for the study of the changes occurred in the Archipiélago, GISs such as ArcGis were needed to calculate the surfaces corresponding to the coverages, under Landsat images of 1990 and 2018, extracted from Earth Explorer and in comparison with the information available in the interactive maps of the MAE. For the estimation of the net change, the areas by coverages of the work period were used, resulting from the difference between gains and losses. A transition matrix was designed in Excel with the numerical codes for each year for processing in ArcGis. In the same way, the products of the gains and losses served as support for the calculation of the regeneration and reforestation values in order to clarify the research questions. In this way, the results showed that, within the dynamics present on the island, the water body presented a change of 2254.02 ha, exceeding the net change of -952.6 ha of forest cover as an effect of the constant displacement of settlements dedicated to shrimp farming. This is consistent with the 4798.15 ha gained by shrimp concessions in the area and the -2583.62 ha of vegetation cover reduced between 1990-2018; proving that there are indeed mangrove losses due to the operational processes of the industry. It’s essential to emphasize that, in the Archipiélago, a deforestation rate of 11% and a regeneration rate of 7% was found. In conclusion, the hectares of mangrove cleared for shrimp farming in the sector don’t represent excessive values. However, the socioeconomic and environmental impacts on the environment are detrimental because they threaten the well-being of marine and coastal life, the ecological composition of the ecosystem, the local economy and the health of the inhabitants. Faced with this problem, the province of El Oro has strengths that can be rescued, focused on the conservation and development of the localities, opening opportunities for tourism and sustainable activities in the area with joint support, which are even beneficial for shrimp producers, as they prevent the deterioration of the mangrove's natural production capacity.