Biodiversity Monitoring of Traditional Agroforestry Sites in Amazonian Ecuador

Keaton Scanlon

Chakras, or homegardens, are traditional plots of relatively low input agroforestry that incorporate the already established forest ecosystems to produce crops of human value, including timber, medicine, food and fruit. Ancestral to the Kichwa people in Amazonian Ecuador, amongst many other indigenous groups of the greater Amazonian region, chakras have customarily been used as a primary source of food and fiber and as a method of subsistence living for indigenous groups of the region. However, over the past century as the Amazon has been more intensively logged and cleared for land, the reduction of virgin forest has also created a gap in the way Kichwas now sustain themselves. New forest regulations intended to preserve surviving forestland have made it so that traditional practices such as hunting and timber harvest have become illegal in national park areas, leaving Kichwas with lesser options when it comes to making a living in world that increasingly calls for sources of monetary income. In congruence with this increasingly glaring problem, this study aims to test the biodiversity contribution made by these traditional chakra agroforestry systems. This study takes samples from primary forest, secondary forest, a multi-strata agroforestry system, a single crop (Ilex guayusa) dominated agroforestry system and pastureland, with the goal of drawing comparisons between species richness, species abundance, and diversity, as well as comparing similarities and important species present within each management type. In doing this, the study aims to determine whether agroforestry sites contribute to biodiversity in the Amazonian region of Ecuador. A one-way ANOVA test was run each for species richness, species abundance and Shannon Index values. Species richness had a P-value of 1.16e-07, species abundance of 4.54e-07 and Shannon Index of 0.00145, all of which are significant and indicate that chakra systems do have biodiversity levels significantly higher than that of a pasture system. Additionally, notable findings are that the four species that were deemed by locals as being the most important: Bactris gasipaes, Pollalesta discolor, Theobroma cacao and Ilex guayusa are all heavily represented in the agroforestry plots, indicating that agroforestry sites do indeed contain important species for wildlife and human use. The results of this study indicate that a chakra system of agroforestry allows for sustainable use of forests by contributing to food security and income with local Amazonian populations as well as biodiversity conservation within the region.