Multiscale spatial planning to maintain forest connectivity in the Argentine Chaco in the face of deforestation
Agricultural expansion threatens biodiversity due to habitat loss and fragmentation. In the Gran Chaco, a global deforestation hotspot, rampant cropland and pasture expansion raise concerns about the sustainability of these land-use changes. Zoning policies were recently enacted in the Argentine Cha...
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| Format: | Artículo |
| Language: | Inglés |
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Resilience Alliance
2019
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12123/4193 https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol23/iss4/art37/ https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10546-230437 |
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| author | Torella, Sebastián Andrés Piquer Rodriguez, María Levers, Christian Ginzburg, Rubén G. Gavier Pizarro, Gregorio Ignacio Kuemmerle, Tobias |
| author_browse | Gavier Pizarro, Gregorio Ignacio Ginzburg, Rubén G. Kuemmerle, Tobias Levers, Christian Piquer Rodriguez, María Torella, Sebastián Andrés |
| author_facet | Torella, Sebastián Andrés Piquer Rodriguez, María Levers, Christian Ginzburg, Rubén G. Gavier Pizarro, Gregorio Ignacio Kuemmerle, Tobias |
| author_sort | Torella, Sebastián Andrés |
| collection | INTA Digital |
| description | Agricultural expansion threatens biodiversity due to habitat loss and fragmentation. In the Gran Chaco, a global deforestation hotspot, rampant cropland and pasture expansion raise concerns about the sustainability of these land-use changes. Zoning policies were recently enacted in the Argentine Chaco to balance agriculture and conservation, yet the environmental outcomes of implementing these policies remain unclear. Here, we focused on the province of Formosa (Argentina) to evaluate how fully implementing zoning there would affect forest loss and connectivity, and how multiscale landscape planning could enhance environmental outcomes. Specifically, we simulated potential future forest cover for different spatial planning scenarios to assess the effect of (a) implementing regional corridors and (b) enacting additional policies to minimize forest fragmentation at the plot level, under both high and low deforestation rates. We then quantified forest connectivity and fragmentation using morphological image segmentation and landscape indices. Our results show that implementing regional corridors reduced the extent of potential deforestation by 650,000 ha (43%), and this alone strongly increased forest connectivity compared with scenarios without corridors. However, how deforestation would be carried out at the plot level was critically important. Plot-level spatial planning could have a strong and positive effect on mitigating fragmentation and on maintaining connectivity, even in scenarios with high deforestation rates (i.e., reducing the number of forest fragments by up to 35%, increasing the core forest by up to 6%). Moreover, under high deforestation rates, implementing regional corridors and plot-level design had a strong complementary effect on mitigating forest fragmentation (17% less forest fragments than when implementing either of the two strategies alone). Our analyses clearly highlight the opportunities of multiscale spatial planning and the need to complement broad-scale zoning with plot-level landscape design in order to mitigate the negative impacts of deforestation in the Chaco and other active agricultural frontiers. |
| format | Artículo |
| id | INTA4193 |
| institution | Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA -Argentina) |
| language | Inglés |
| publishDate | 2019 |
| publishDateRange | 2019 |
| publishDateSort | 2019 |
| publisher | Resilience Alliance |
| publisherStr | Resilience Alliance |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | INTA41932019-01-02T18:30:45Z Multiscale spatial planning to maintain forest connectivity in the Argentine Chaco in the face of deforestation Torella, Sebastián Andrés Piquer Rodriguez, María Levers, Christian Ginzburg, Rubén G. Gavier Pizarro, Gregorio Ignacio Kuemmerle, Tobias Deforestación Legislación Forestal Conservación del Paisaje Deforestation Forest Law Landscape Conservation Forest Fragmentation Fragmentación de los Bosques Chaco Corridors Agricultural expansion threatens biodiversity due to habitat loss and fragmentation. In the Gran Chaco, a global deforestation hotspot, rampant cropland and pasture expansion raise concerns about the sustainability of these land-use changes. Zoning policies were recently enacted in the Argentine Chaco to balance agriculture and conservation, yet the environmental outcomes of implementing these policies remain unclear. Here, we focused on the province of Formosa (Argentina) to evaluate how fully implementing zoning there would affect forest loss and connectivity, and how multiscale landscape planning could enhance environmental outcomes. Specifically, we simulated potential future forest cover for different spatial planning scenarios to assess the effect of (a) implementing regional corridors and (b) enacting additional policies to minimize forest fragmentation at the plot level, under both high and low deforestation rates. We then quantified forest connectivity and fragmentation using morphological image segmentation and landscape indices. Our results show that implementing regional corridors reduced the extent of potential deforestation by 650,000 ha (43%), and this alone strongly increased forest connectivity compared with scenarios without corridors. However, how deforestation would be carried out at the plot level was critically important. Plot-level spatial planning could have a strong and positive effect on mitigating fragmentation and on maintaining connectivity, even in scenarios with high deforestation rates (i.e., reducing the number of forest fragments by up to 35%, increasing the core forest by up to 6%). Moreover, under high deforestation rates, implementing regional corridors and plot-level design had a strong complementary effect on mitigating forest fragmentation (17% less forest fragments than when implementing either of the two strategies alone). Our analyses clearly highlight the opportunities of multiscale spatial planning and the need to complement broad-scale zoning with plot-level landscape design in order to mitigate the negative impacts of deforestation in the Chaco and other active agricultural frontiers. Instituto de Recursos Biológicos Fil: Torella, Sebastián Andrés. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Grupo de Estudios de Sistemas Ecológicos en Ambientes Agrícolas; Argentina Fil: Piquer Rodriguez, María. Humboldt-University Berlin. Geography Department; Alemania Fil: Levers, Christian. Humboldt-University Berlin. Geography Department; Alemania Fil: Guizburg, Rubén G. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Ecología, Genética y Evolución. Grupo de Estudios de Sistemas Ecológicos en Ambientes Agrícolas; Argentina Fil: Gavier Pizarro, Gregorio Ignacio. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Recursos Biológicos; Argentina Fil: Kuemmerle, Tobias. Humboldt-University Berlin. Geography Department; Alemania. Humboldt-University Berlin. Integrative Research Institute for Transformations in Human Environment Systems; Alemania 2019-01-02T18:26:23Z 2019-01-02T18:26:23Z 2018 info:ar-repo/semantics/artículo info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12123/4193 https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol23/iss4/art37/ 1708-3087 https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10546-230437 eng info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) application/pdf Resilience Alliance Ecology and society 23 (4) : 37. (2018) |
| spellingShingle | Deforestación Legislación Forestal Conservación del Paisaje Deforestation Forest Law Landscape Conservation Forest Fragmentation Fragmentación de los Bosques Chaco Corridors Torella, Sebastián Andrés Piquer Rodriguez, María Levers, Christian Ginzburg, Rubén G. Gavier Pizarro, Gregorio Ignacio Kuemmerle, Tobias Multiscale spatial planning to maintain forest connectivity in the Argentine Chaco in the face of deforestation |
| title | Multiscale spatial planning to maintain forest connectivity in the Argentine Chaco in the face of deforestation |
| title_full | Multiscale spatial planning to maintain forest connectivity in the Argentine Chaco in the face of deforestation |
| title_fullStr | Multiscale spatial planning to maintain forest connectivity in the Argentine Chaco in the face of deforestation |
| title_full_unstemmed | Multiscale spatial planning to maintain forest connectivity in the Argentine Chaco in the face of deforestation |
| title_short | Multiscale spatial planning to maintain forest connectivity in the Argentine Chaco in the face of deforestation |
| title_sort | multiscale spatial planning to maintain forest connectivity in the argentine chaco in the face of deforestation |
| topic | Deforestación Legislación Forestal Conservación del Paisaje Deforestation Forest Law Landscape Conservation Forest Fragmentation Fragmentación de los Bosques Chaco Corridors |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12123/4193 https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol23/iss4/art37/ https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10546-230437 |
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