Vegetation of the greater Maya Mountains, Belize

2004/08/01 by Malcolm Penn, David A. Sutton, Alex Monro · 3 citations
Environmental Science · #Species Distribution and Climate Change #Remote Sensing in Agriculture #Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies

paper · doi:10.1017/s1477200004001318

openalex publication_date 2004/08/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

This paper describes a new vegetation classification for the Greater Maya Mountains of Belize, focusing primarily on the Chiquibul Forest Reserve. Extensive use is made of GIS, remote sensing, botanical collections and field visits to provide a macro‐ and meso‐scale overview of the vegetation of this region. A total of 32 vegetation classes have been defined, both geographically and structurally, including 11 new classes. Where possible, classes have been compared with earlier classifications. A dominant scaling technique has been used to enable direct comparison between ground truthing data and a supervised Maximum Likelihood Classifier image‐based vegetation classification. The merits of such classifications and the effect of scale are discussed.

Cited by

• An extended and higher-resolution record of climate and land use from stalagmite MC01 from Macal Chasm, Belize, revealing connections between major dry events, overall climate variability, and Maya sociopolitical changes
• Las Cuevas, Belize [wikipedia]
• Maya Mountains [wikipedia]