Resumen

KINGSBURY, Nancy D.. Impacts of land use and cultural change in a fragile environment: indigenous acculturation and deforestation in kavanayén, gran sabana, venezuela. INCI [online]. 2001, vol.26, n.8, pp.327-336. ISSN 0378-1844.

Though it has been widely asserted that recent deforestation in the Gran Sabana is a result of intensified shifting cultivation, no supporting community-specific data on rates of vegetation and land use changes has previously been provided. Mapping of vegetation and land use in Kavanayén, the largest indigenous community in the Gran Sabana, and comparison with similar earlier data, indicate that in areas of intensive cultivation there has in fact been substantial forest loss and deflection to secondary non-forest vegetation. The deforestation in these valleys is directly associated with intensive agriculture and abbreviation of the fallow period and indirectly with the increasing use of fire that accompanies cultivation and the increase in combustible secondary vegetation. Changes in the indigenous culture, namely, increases in population size and density and, for some cultivators, changes in agricultural site selection characteristics that now emphasize logistical as opposed to the more traditional environmental factors, are intimately connected with the move to more spatially and temporally intensified cultivation and the resultant deforestation in the fallow period.

Palabras clave : Shifting Cultivation ; Pemón Amerindians ; Deforestation ; Acculturation .