Non-L\'evy mobility patterns of Mexican Me'Phaa peasants searching for fuelwood

TL;DR

This study analyzes the walking patterns of Mexican peasants collecting fuelwood, revealing non-Lévy search behaviors influenced by degraded landscapes, with implications for forest management and ecological restoration.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of fuelwood collection mobility patterns in Mexican peasants, showing deviations from Lévy flights due to landscape degradation.

Findings

Displacements are not compatible with Lévy flight models.

Searching strategies are influenced by landscape degradation.

Results inform forest management and ecological restoration efforts.

Abstract

We measured mobility patterns that describe walking trajectories of individual Me'Phaa peasants searching and collecting fuelwood in the forests of "La Monta\~na de Guerrero" in Mexico. These one-day excursions typically follow a mixed pattern of nearly-constant steps when individuals displace from their homes towards potential collecting sites and a mixed pattern of steps of different lengths when actually searching for fallen wood in the forest. Displacements in the searching phase seem not to be compatible with L\'evy flights described by power-laws with optimal scaling exponents. These findings however can be interpreted in the light of deterministic searching on heavily degraded landscapes where the interaction of the individuals with their scarce environment produces alternative searching strategies than the expected L\'evy flights. These results have important implications for future management and restoration of degraded forests and the improvement of the ecological services they may provide to their inhabitants.