University Campus as ecological restoration units: the case of the University of Sierra Juárez, Oaxaca, Mexico

Abstract

Ecological restoration helps the recovery of an ecosystem and on university campus, it is considered as a possible solution to reverse the degradation processes. The objective is to identify the degree of ecological restoration in the University of the Sierra de Juárez (UNSIJ) campus in Oaxaca, through the analysis of land use change since its foundation. Using historical satellite images, from 2003 and 2020, land use changes were analyzed. A supervised classification was performed and the normalized vegetation index was calculated. A total of 81 150 restoration sites were identified in Mexico, 4513 of the placed in Oaxaca, and 341 at the Sierra Norte, one of them corresponding to the UNSIJ campus. A figure of 334 species of Asteraceae was recorded at Ixtlán.The images used revealed that both arboreal and secondary increased between 10 and 25.6%.The UNSIJ has facilitated the restoration of the natural resources forming part of its environment.