The Milpa System is an ancient agroecosystem that has played a crucial role in Mesoamerican agriculture for over 9,000 years, particularly in Mexico and Central America. This system provides essential ecosystem services, such as food production, soil quality restoration, biodiversity conservation and the transmission of ecological knowledge. The objective of this systematic review is to inventory and analyse the potential ecosystem services provided by the Milpa System and similar maize-based intercropping systems. The review followed the PRISMA methodology, ensuring rigorous and reproducible research across studies published worldwide in English and Spanish between 2017 and 2023. The analysis included 47 studies that identified a total of 38 distinct ecosystem services. Amongst these, five provisioning services were identified, with 32 articles highlighting food provision. Twenty regulation and maintenance services were discussed, with biodiversity conservation being the most prominent, mentioned in 24 articles. However, cultural services were under-represented, appearing in only 12 articles. Despite the limited research on the Milpa System’s ecosystem services, particularly outside of Mexico, the findings underscore the system’s critical role in promoting agricultural resilience, ensuring food security and conserving biodiversity. This review emphasises the need for increased research to preserve and promote the Milpa System as a sustainable agricultural model that contributes to the well-being of both local communities and broader ecosystems.

The provision of ecosystem services (ES) in a particular region is strongly related to land use. In 2013, San José Chiapa, México, was selected as the new operations base for an automotive company. The installation of the new automotive plant will encourage population growth from 8000 to 200,000 inhabitants by 2050. Consequently, the rise in the demand for land to urbanize will increase at a rate expected to have a significant impact in terms of land-use change, affecting the provision of ES in the region. This paper aims to characterize the ES provision that was present in the region before industrialization and to evaluate the potential effect of land-use change on ES provision. This study analyzed geographic and demographic information and involved a series of field trips to characterize the services present in the area. The ES budget is positive regarding the production of biomass, due to the rural nature of most of the study area. However, this picture is changing with the continuous growth of urban areas due to economic development. This is a critical point for the region regarding ES provision, and only a joint effort between municipalities and industry will make it possible for the region to seize on development while maintaining ES provision.

A model that provides researchers with a powerful tool for the classification and study of native corn by aiding in the identification of racial complexes which are fundamental to Mexico's agriculture and culture. This package has been developed based on data collected by "Proyecto Global de Maíces Nativos México", which has conducted exhaustive surveys across the country to document the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of different types of native maize. The trained model uses a robust and diverse dataset, enabling it to achieve an 80% accuracy in classifying maize racial complexes. The characteristics included in the analysis comprise geographic location, grain and cob colors, as well as various physical measurements, such as lengths and widths.

The Milpa System is a millenary agroecosystem that has played a crucial role in Mesoamerican agriculture for over 9,000 years. This system provides essential ecosystem services such as food production, soil quality restoration and the transmission of ecological knowledge. The objective of this paper is to inventory the potential ecosystem services provided by the milpa system, based on a systematic review of the literature. The review was conducted using the PRISMA methodology, ensuring reproducible and structured research. Despite the milpa system has been vital for Mexican agriculture, there is a significant lack of research on its ecosystem services. Because of this, the review was broadened to involve other types of polyculture agroecosystems that include maize as an integral part of their composition, resulting in the review of 47 articles encompassing 38 ecosystem services. Among these, five Provisioning services were identified, with 32 of the articles mentioning food provision. Twenty Regulation and Maintenance services are mentioned in 24 articles, while Cultural services are the least studied, appearing in only 12 articles. Although there is not enough research done on the potential of the milpa system to provide with ecosystem services, it remains a cornerstone of Mexican agriculture and social identity. Preserving and promoting the milpa system is essential for enhancing agricultural resilience, ensuring food security and conserving biodiversity.

Provides tools for preprocessing camera trap image data to prepare it for training machine learning models. It automates tasks such as extracting EXIF metadata, processing and analyzing image attributes, selecting relevant images (e.g., daytime photos), sampling subsets, and managing file organization. These features streamline the workflow for ecological research and wildlife monitoring projects. Additionally, the package includes tools for generating exploratory visualizations and creating annotation datasets.