Updating Bark Proportions for the Estimation of Tropical Timber Volumes by Indigenous Community-Based Forest Enterprises in Quintana Roo, Mexico

Sustainable management of tropical forests is essential for conserving the ecosystem services they provide and protecting the livelihoods of the millions of people who depend on these forests. Community-based forest management in Quintana Roo, Mexico, has shown that conserving forests while generating economic benefits is achievable in the tropics. However, this management is carried out with technical gaps that jeopardize sustainable use of these resources. Crucial among these gaps is a lack of equations for precise calculations of logged timber volumes. Current equations employ a proportion of bark volume (PBV) of 0.14 for mahogany and a flat 0.10 for species with dense woods, despite their wide variation in bark thickness. Here, using Meyer's method, we calculated species-specific PBVs for the most commercially-important species in the Felipe Carrillo Puerto community-based logging operation. For most species, the new PBVs were smaller, indicating that wood volumes are currently underestimated. However, for two species, PBVs were higher. New values could influence the profits of the local enterprise and on the management of some of the most commercially-important species of Mexico's tropical forests through changes in the numbers of individuals felled.