Mexico is an important global reservoir of biological and cultural richness and traditional knowledge of wild mushrooms. However, there is a high risk of loss of this knowledge due to the erosion of traditional human cultures which is related with the rapid acculturation linked to high migration of rural populations to cities and the U.S.A., and the loss of natural ecosystems. The Mixtec people, the third largest native group in Mexico only after the Nahua and the Maya, maintain ancient traditions in the use and knowledge of wild mushrooms. Paradoxically, there are few studies of the Mixtec ethnomycology. This study shows our ethnomycological research, mainly focused on knowledge and use of wild mushrooms in communities of the Mixteca Alta, in southeastern Mexico. We hypothesized that among the studied communities those with a combination of higher vegetation cover of natural pine and oak forests, lower soil erosion and higher economic margination had a greater richness and knowledge of wild mushrooms. Our study therefore aimed to record traditional knowledge, use, nomenclature and classification of wild mushrooms in four Mixtec communities and to analyze how these aspects vary according to environmental and cultural conditions among the studied communities. In order to analyze the cultural significance of wild mushrooms for the Mixtec people, 116 non-structured and semi-structured interviews were performed from 2009 to 2014. Information about the identified species, particularly the regional nomenclature and classification, their edibility, toxicity and ludic uses, the habitat of useful mushrooms, traditional recipes and criteria to differentiate between toxic and edible species, and mechanisms of knowledge transmission were studied. The research had the important particularity that the first author is Mixtec, native of the study area. A comparative qualitative analysis between the richness of fungal species used locally and the official information of the natural vegetation cover, soil erosion and economic marginalization in each of the studied communities was conducted. A total of 106 species of mushrooms were identified growing in pine and oak forest, deciduous tropical forest and grassland; among the identified mushrooms we recorded 26 species locally consumed, 18 considered toxic, 6 having ludic uses and the remaining 56 species not being used in the studied areas but some of them having potential as food (56 species) or medicine (28 species). We recorded that 80, 22 and 4 species are ectomycorrhizal, saprotrophic and parasites, respectively. Our study shows that a complex and accurate knowledge related with the use, nomenclature, classification, ecology, gastronomy of wild mushrooms has been developed by Mixtecs; and that there is a relation between natural vegetation cover, lower soil erosion and higher economic marginalization and richness, knowledge and use of mushrooms in the studied communites. Our study showed that conservation and adaptation of ancestral mycological knowledge survives mainly through oral transmition, maintenance of cultural identity, forest protection, preservation native language and also paradoxically through the current socieconomical marginality among the Mixtec people. We also found that those studied communities with a combination of higher vegetation cover of natural pine and oak forests, lower soil erosion and higher economic marginalization showed a greater richness and knowledge of wild mushrooms. Use and sustainable management of wild mushrooms can be an alternative for local integrated development, but local knowledge and traditional worldview should be included into the regional programs of Mixtec biocultural conservation.

Mexico’s basin is one of the most altered in the country, owing to the presence of the megalopolis of Mexico City. Lake Texcoco, which had the basin’s biggest extension, dried up almost completely. The basin’s evolution over time led in the formation of a megabasin in which water is transported from one source to another to serve the urban region and subsequently drained to prevent flooding. The major hydrotechnical works in Mexico Basin have been interpreted as a solution to the problem of flooding in Mexico City, but they were actually part of a much larger strategy of territorial appropriation by the Spanish colonists. The ecological imbalance that has resulted has sparked a variety of social issues. For the purpose of analyzing the environmental transformation of Lake Texcoco over the last 500 years, actors and processes that influenced specific moments in the country’s history were identified; these elements showed the inexorable relationship between the lake and Mexico City. Subsequently, they were grouped by periods with similar trends in terms of the way in which society relates to and appropriates the natural environment of the lake. It was found that the critical moment for the desiccation of Lake Texcoco occurred during the Spanish colonial historical period as part of the redesign of the city; from then on, the same environmental imaginary prevailed century after century, shaped by social and economic factors. This study contributes to the literature on how urbanization affects natural resources by making an original theoretical contribution through an analysis based on political ecology, and it adds to the literature on how people use the prevailing federal area of the lake.

The objective of this research is to evaluate the precision and accuracy of local soil class maps generated with four computer algorithms: minimum distance, parallelepiped, maximum likelihood, and artificial neural networks, using digital elevation models and spectral signatures of local soil classes as input data. The study was done in the states of Mexico, San Luis Potosi, and Veracruz. Statistical binomial proportion tests were done to compare the difference between maps' precision and accuracy. The conclusion was that the combination of reflectance and elevation improved the quality of soil class maps produced by CAC, due to the reflectance variation of local soil classes according to altitude, which helped to better identify them. The best precision was 84% and the best accuracy was 30%.

Lake Texcoco in Mexico is a remarkable place for observing how human and natural relationships evolve through time in a landscape. Since the opening of the watershed and the draining of the lake, there have been various attempts to exploit the area, although few have succeeded. This study highlights the importance of historical analysis in identifying socio-natural processes that have historically influenced lake use, degradation, management, and conservation. The novelty of this study lies in its application of a historical political ecology approach to understand the evolving dynamics between power relations and the ecology of the former Lake Texcoco in Mexico Valley. By examining both the ecological and political-economic history of the lake, this study reveals how conflicts related to natural resource management in the past have influenced the ecological dynamics of the present. Overall, this study presents a unique perspective on the socio-natural history of Lake Texcoco, demonstrating the potential of using historical political ecology to understand the long-term effects of environmental change.