My final project for GIS is the first stage of a client project for the Guatemalan NGO ProPeten. This organization works on environmental sustainability in Peten, Guatemala and the Maya Biosphere Reserve. This protected forest reserve was established in 1990 and technically prohibits further development within its boundaries. However, for a variety of complex economic and social reasons, development continues. My specific project is called Remedios and is ProPeten's first project that directly addresses population growth and family health care as an environmental concern in the region. The project began this summer by collecting population data for the Peten beginning around 1950 and continuing to the present. This was no small task considering the variety of agencies that collect this information and their disparate levels of organization, accuracy, and longevity. Each of the twelve municipalities in the Peten has offices that maintain population data in various forms. In addition, the long civil war complicated data collection and the numbers often vary significantly from one source to another. After this was completed, I searched for historical maps of the Peten in order to trace some of the road development in the region which, we felt, might coincide with migration and population growth. Finally, I gathered shapefiles for the Peten and am continuing to collect satellite imagery of the deforestation trends. Through a combination of this data, we hope to visually create a picture of development, population growth, and environmental impact in the Peten. This will be used in an effort to convince policy makers to fund projects that address population growth and women's and family health as an issue related to environmental management of the region.

The first layout shows the location of the Peten and the Biosphere Reserve in relation to the rest of Guatemala. I selected out the one main road that connects the Peten to the capital city in an effort to demonstrate its relative isolation from the rest of the country. This road has only recently been paved and takes approximately twelve hours by bus to go from Guatemala City to Flores. It is approximately 500km and using the measurement tool in ArcView the road is about 250 miles. There is also a small airport in Flores, which is indicated in the layout. The map shows the Maya Biosphere Reserve, which covers about 4 million acres or 75% of the Peten. I have also included satellite imagery from the internet, which depicts highly forested areas in the region. Later in the year I hope to have more data to show how the forest cover has changed over time.

The second layout shows the Peten region in more detail. The Biosphere Reserve is divided into protected national parks in the north and the multiple use zone in the south. Technically, the northern area is only designated for scientific research and controlled tourist activity. The main tourist destination is Tikal and has been designated on the map with the symbol resembling a temple. The road from the airport to Tikal is about 35 miles and contains the majority of tourist amenities in the region. Many people are looking to expand upon the tourist industry as a sustainable method of generating income. Even using concepts of eco-tourism, development in this area greatly affects the Biosphere Reserve and is extremely controversial. The photo in the next layout depicts the famous archeological ruins at Tikal. They are one of the most spectacular Maya sites in Central America. The second photo shows some of the incredible wildlife in the region. In addition to a huge variety of birds, there are howler monkeys, deer, crocodiles, turtles, wild turkeys, butterflies and the list goes on. (These photos are hot linked in my project by the way!)

The multiple use zones to the south allow for a greater number of activities and includes agroforestry, biological corridors, cultural and forest management zones, etc. Again, there is a great deal of controversy regarding what types of activities are sustainable in the region. Ultimately, economic necessity has led to less stringent control of the Biosphere Reserve. Slash and burn food production practices are one of the main issues facing forest preservation in this zone. Another is oil exploration.

The next layout is designed to show the twelve municipalities in the Peten. They are labeled and the capital of each municipality is designated. The population data that I have collected is available by municipality and by community. I utilized the data associated with the municipalities for this final but I am still deciding the best way to work with the community data. All of the names of the communities are in Spanish and ArcView does not recognize any names containing accent marks. Since there are only 12 municipalities I simply assigned them a number in order to join the data, but I have thousands of entries for population data by community.

The next image is a graph generated in excel that shows population growth for the entire region beginning in 1950 and projected out until 2010. The sources of this data include USAID and a variety Guatemalan government agencies as well as NGOs. Their numbers often varied a great deal and I am still working to determine whether the two sharp increases in population depicted in the graph merely reflect inaccurate data collection or actual growth patterns. Current population estimates in the Peten range from 300,000 to 600,000 people. This is anywhere from 20-40 times the estimated 15,000 people who lived there in 1950. This is due to migration as well as a high birth rate estimated to be an average of six children per family. The future projections we made are based upon more conservative estimates of current population. As I continue to work on this project I would like to create some graphs that depict percentage changes in addition to the raw numbers I used for this final. The final layout shows the raw population numbers in 1985, 1995, and 2005 by municipality. Nine out of the twelve municipalities have moved into a higher category on the graduated scale that indicates the number of residents.

In conclusion, future policy decisions will have a huge impact on the natural (and therefore human) environment in the Peten. More people mean greater demand for water and land resources. Many organizations including ProPeten are working to create sustainable industry and empower local communities. The Remedios project represents a unique angle to environmental management by addressing human population growth and its impacts. We believe that increased access to health care as well as family planning and education initiatives are a necessary part of the work being done to preserve the Maya Biosphere Reserve.