Modelling avocado-driven deforestation in Michoacán, Mexico

Abstract

As demand for avocado climbs, avocado production in Michoacán - Mexico's biggest avocado growing region - expands into new places. We use a spatial probit model to project the geographic distribution of likely future avocado expansion and analyze those results to determine (a) threats to specific forest types and (b) how the distribution of avocado is shifting spatially under current and future climate scenarios. Our results suggest that avocado expansion in Michoacán is strongly driven by distance to existing agriculture, roads, and localities, as well as the dwindling availability of Andosol soils. As future expansion ensues, it presents risk of forest loss across various forest types, with pine-oak forest, mesophilic montane forest, and oyamel fir forest being of particular concern. Moreover, our results suggest that avocado production will occupy wider ranges in terms of temperature, precipitation, slope steepness and soil. The model predicts that climate change will alter the spatial distribution of avocado plantings, expanding into forest types at lower and at higher elevations. Forest loss threatens ecosystem degradation, and a wider avocado crop production footprint could lead to orchard establishment into dwindling forests that host a high diversity of native oaks and charismatic species, including the monarch butterfly.