Multiscale spatial planning to maintain  forest connectivity in the Argentine Chaco in the face of deforestation

Torrella, Sebastián A.; Piquer‐Rodriguez, María; Levers, Christian; Ginzburg, Rubén; Gavier-Pizarro, Gregorio; Kuemmerle, Tobias

doi:10.5751/es-10546-230437

Cited by 32 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…For instance, some species were consistently losers regardless of the woodland extent ; these species require unaltered natural habitats (Table ). Third, trade‐off assessments should explicitly consider both local and regional scales (Torrella et al., 2018). Few past studies have looked at the role of landscape composition surroundings to determine agriculture–biodiversity trade–offs.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trade‐offs between biodiversity and agriculture are moving targets in dynamic landscapes

Macchi

Decarre

Goijman

et al. 2020

Journal of Applied Ecology

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1. Understanding how biodiversity responds to intensifying agriculture is critical to mitigating the trade-offs between them. These trade-offs are particularly strong in tropical and subtropical deforestation frontiers, yet it remains unclear how changing landscape context in such frontiers alters agriculture-biodiversity trade-offs. 2. We focus on the Argentinean Chaco, a global deforestation hotspot, to explore how landscape context shapes trade-off curves between agricultural intensity and avian biodiversity. We use a space-for-time approach and integrate a large field dataset of bird communities (197 species, 234 survey plots), three agricultural intensity metrics (meat yield, energy yield and profit) and a range of environmental covariates in a hierarchical Bayesian occupancy framework. 3. Woodland extent in the landscape consistently determines how individual bird species, and the bird community as a whole, respond to agricultural intensity. Many species switch in their fundamental response, from decreasing occupancy with increased agricultural intensity when woodland extent in the landscape is low (loser species), to increasing occupancy with increased agricultural intensity when woodland extent is high (winner species). 4. This suggests that landscape context strongly mediates who wins and loses along agricultural intensity gradients. Likewise, where landscapes change, such as in deforestation frontiers, the very nature of the agriculture-biodiversity trade-offs can change as landscapes transformation progresses. 5. Synthesis and applications. Schemes to mitigate agriculture-biodiversity trade-offs, such as land sparing or sharing, must consider landscape context. Strategies that are identified based on a snapshot of data risk failure in dynamic landscapes, particularly where agricultural expansion continues to reduce natural habitats. Rather than a single, fixed strategy, adaptive management of agriculture-biodiversity | 2055 Journal of Applied Ecology MACCHI et Al.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trade‐offs between biodiversity and agriculture are moving targets in dynamic landscapes

Macchi

Decarre

Goijman

et al. 2020

Journal of Applied Ecology

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“…Smart landscape design can help to transition towards more sustainable land systems, and zoning is a key instrument in this context (Turner II et al, 2013, Torrella et al, 2018. Our analyses of the current zoning of the Argentinean Chaco suggest considerable unused potential for managing agriculture-environment trade-offs.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…This should include (a) protecting remaining larger forest patches (e.g. in the El Impenetrable) from conversion, even to silvopastures, (b) ensuring connectivity between areas of natural habitat (Torrella et al, 2018), (c) fostering the establishment of carbon-and biodiversity-rich silvopastures, including in areas where that is currently not required (i.e. in 'green' development zones), and (d) supporting forest smallholders to transition to more sustainable modes of forest and wildlife use, in order to increase the overall environmental benefits of forest smallholder systems.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fading opportunities for mitigating agriculture-environment trade-offs in a South American deforestation hotspot

Law¹,

Macchi²,

Baumann³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Strong trade-offs between agriculture and the environment occur in deforestation frontiers, particularly in the world’s rapidly disappearing tropical and subtropical dry forests. Pathways to mitigate these trade-offs are often unclear, as well as how deforestation or different policies alter the option space of available pathways. Using a spatial optimization framework based on linear programming, we developed a landscape-scale possibility frontier describing trade-offs between agricultural profit, biodiversity, and carbon stock for the Argentinean Dry Chaco, a global deforestation hotspot. We use this framework to assess how current land-use zoning, as well as past and future land-use-trajectories, alter the option space to minimize trade-offs between biodiversity, carbon, and agriculture. Our analyses yield four major insights. First, we found substantial co-benefits between biodiversity and carbon, yet strong trade-offs of both with agriculture. Second, development according to the current zoning could lead to highly suboptimal socio-ecological outcomes, and our analysis pinpoints how this zoning could be improved. Third, high landscape-scale multifunctionality can be achieved using different land-use strategies, but maintaining >40% of forest is essential in all of them, and silvopastoral systems appear to be central for achieving high overall multifunctionality. Finally, our results suggest the window of opportunity is closing rapidly: recent land-use changes since 2000 have rapidly moved the Chaco within the options space, with forest extent declining towards critical thresholds for maintaining balanced, multifunctional landscapes. Our results emphasize that the time for sustainability planning in the Chaco is now. More broadly, we show how multi-criteria optimization can describe dynamic trade-offs between agriculture and the environment at landscape and regional scales. This can help to identify land-system tipping points that, once crossed, would inhibit more sustainable futures, and policies to avoid such potential traps.

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“…Other studies have been supported their decision based mainly on environmental criteria Torrella et al, 2018;Balzotti et al, 2020), considering their ability to represent the landscape characteristics. Loro et al (2016) mentioned that methods based on environmental criteria can introduce substantial variability in the evaluation process.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing Environmental Criteria to Support Forest Connectivity

Vanderley-Silva

Valente

2021

Preprint

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Establishing forest connection in landscapes under urban sprawl is essential for maintaining the ecological processes and ensuring biodiversity conservation. However, the major challenge is incorporated the ecological network in the land-use/land-cover planning. This way, the main objective of the study was the evaluation of environmental criteria for prioritizing areas to obtain forest functional connectivity in a landscape subject to the urban sprawl. The second objective was to understand how the criteria are associated with the structural forest attributes represented by traditional landscape ecology metrics. The criteria were defined through the literature review, representing the landscape characteristics as the topographic, conflicts, and biotics. The metrics used to characterize the forest structure were perimeter, shape index, and distance to the nearest neighbor. They were generated to a selected group of forest remnants, which represent the landscape forest structure. Sampling the criteria and forest fragments maps (i.e., different maps representing the metrics-values) through the hexagon network, we assessed how the criteria are associated with the structural forest attributes. The statistical analysis used to evaluate these sampled values were The Moran Global (Moran I) and Moran Local (LISA). We obtained that the urban expansion process is diffuse, although it does not occur randomly in our landscape. The criteria slope, TWI, distance from drainage network, distance from highways, distance from the low-density urban area, and distance from forest patches have characteristics that support this process. Furthermore, our results indicated a spatial autocorrelation among metrics and after, among metrics and these criteria. Also, we obtained that the external influences on the fragments did not occur randomly and that the criteria act on the landscape. This way, through these criteria, we can identify regions where it is possible to have the persistence of forest fragments, even though in places under the impact of urban sprawl.

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Multiscale spatial planning to maintain forest connectivity in the Argentine Chaco in the face of deforestation

Cited by 32 publications

References 52 publications

Trade‐offs between biodiversity and agriculture are moving targets in dynamic landscapes

Trade‐offs between biodiversity and agriculture are moving targets in dynamic landscapes

Fading opportunities for mitigating agriculture-environment trade-offs in a South American deforestation hotspot

Assessing Environmental Criteria to Support Forest Connectivity

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