%0 artículo original %A Goebel Mc Dermott, Anthony %D 2017 %G spa %T Bosques, fincas y ciudades. Un acercamiento al proceso socio-metabólico de apropiación en la Región Norte de Costa Rica (1909-1955) %U https://www.revistas.una.ac.cr/index.php/historia/article/view/9569 %X From the perspective of social metabolism, appropriation becomes the primary form of exchange between human societies and Nature. It is during this process that societies appropriate for themselves materials, energy, and services required by humans and their artifacts, dismantling and disrupting ecosystems for productive purposes. It is on these premises that this analysis intends to shed light on the main socio-ecological transformations that took place in Costa Rica’s Northern Region, marked by a slow, late, and incomplete incorporation to the economic, social, and political project emanated from the Central Valley. Forest exploitation followed by livestock farming became the predominant economic alternatives in the region, in spite of significant intra-regional differences. This “commercial appropriation” of Nature, established since the beginning of the territory’s colonization, brought about profound ecological and environmental consequences such as the loss of biodiversity, simplification of ecosystems, depletion of soil nutrients, reduction in the forests’ ecological functions, and in general, degradation of the ecosystems.