Characterization of social-ecological interactions between colonists and biodiversity in the Ecuadorian Amazon: ecosystem services and resilience

Description

We characterized the social-ecological interactions between colonists and biodiversity in four social-ecological systems located in two southern Amazonian provinces of Ecuador. This characterization allowed us to identify the ecosystem services and disservices obtained by colonists and to assess the resilience of the interactions that provide them.

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We conducted one-on-one semi-structured interviews (n = 89) to collect information about the social-ecological interactions across several colonist communities in the four parishes selected. To choose the participants, we applied a snowball sampling approach. We applied a questionnaire (Appendix 1) to adult, voluntary participants (one per farm). The first part of the questionnaire included close-ended questions to assess the socioeconomic characteristics of each participant (age, gender, residence duration, and wage jobs). The three subsistence activities on which we focused: agriculture, hunting, and cattle ranching, were also characterized in this section. The second part of the questionnaire contained open-ended questions geared to describe the interviewee's knowledge of ES and the institutions' role in regulating access to natural resources. The interviews were recorded with each participant's free, informed consent to comply with the University of Sherbrooke and the University of Florida Institutional Review Boards.

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