Spatial analysis of residential fuelwood supply and demand patterns in Mexico using the WISDOM approach

A WISDOM analysis was conducted in Mexico in order to: (1) identify fuelwood (FW) hot spots in terms of residential FW use and availability of FW resources for the year 2000, and (2) estimate net CO2 emissions from the non-renewable use of FW. WISDOM (woodfuel integrated supply/demand overview mapping) is a spatially explicit method, based on geographic information system (GIS) technology, which ranks a set of spatial units according to a group of indicators, in order to identify woodfuel priority areas or woodfuel hot spots. A comprehensive analysis was conducted, integrating full coverage national data on land cover classes, land cover change maps (1993–2000), geo-referenced population censuses (1990 and 2000), and a meticulous review of the international literature and Mexican case studies. Following a spatial multi-criteria analysis, 2395 counties (out of a country total of 2424 in year 2000) were ranked based on the number, density and annual growth rate of FW users; the percentage of households that use FW; the resilience of FW consumption, and the magnitude and likely trends of FW forest resources. The WISDOM analysis allowed the identification of 304 high priority counties (HPC), which showed a spatially aggregated pattern into 16 clusters. HPC cover 4% of Mexican territory and represent 27% of total FW consumption. We estimated that are released to the atmosphere by non-renewable FW burning, a value that represents less than 1% of Mexican total annual CO2 emissions in 2002. The results of the analysis show that WISDOM is a useful tool for both focusing resources to critical areas where action is more needed and to obtain more accurate estimates of the impacts associated to FW use.