Zoning a Protected Area: Proposal Based on a Multi-thematic Approach and Final Decision

Abstract

The Madrid Regional Government (Central Spain) proposes a zone of the Guadarrama Mountains to be declared as a National Park. This paper reports on the zoning method developed to this end. The procedure followed considers compatibility of land uses with landscape characteristics and proposes protecting a part of the zone through declaration of National Park status and declaring another part as a Regional Park. The approach is based upon a multivariate environmental analysis aimed at zoning for optimal location of potential activities. The zoning permits the design of protected areas following the criteria underlying the declaration of these two categories in accordance with the Spanish environmental legislation in force. A practical tool for policy decision-making is provided. However, the final decision taken by policymakers in the design and zoning of protected areas differed from the model output used by the scientists. This is discussed in the paper to illustrate the interactions between political decision-making and scientific modelling.

Environmental valuation by the local population and visitors for zoning a protected area

“…As results can clearly differ, the aim of this debate is to reach a consensus and to put forward a proposal, which is to be objective (scientific), and to facilitate a political decision which will also involve other dimensions (Ruiz Labourdette et al [16]) that can all too often produce results that are not easily explained.…”

“…Calculation of coefficients to characterise each thematic reaction to each hypothetical use enables us to weight the responses of the territory and to establish the magnitude as a weighted sum (the renamed 'environmental impact assessment'). This weighting enables us to estimate and map the carrying capacity of each of the sectors of the territory as objectively as possible (Montalvo et al [4], Ruiz-Labourdette et al [16], among other studies on ecological planning).…”

“…Our research was based on (i) the valuation of four socio-ecological 'themes' -the landscape character, valuated both by the local population living within each polygon and by visitors, and two socioeconomic aspects, standard of living and quality of life of the local population, also applied inside each polygon-. We (ii) analysed the compatibility of each theme with the land uses and activities associated with the proposed national park, according to Ruiz-Labourdette et al [16]. Five steps were considered:…”

“…The relative change in value of each unit of each attribute was considered as the cost or partial impact of the use hypothesis in question. The impact was estimated in reference to a previous ordinal scale established in the appraisal of the units in each attribute (Pineda et al [13], Ruiz-Labourdette et al [16]): ΔV ij = V f -V a , where V f is the value on the polygon j, of the theme i, estimated after being subjected to that use (the new position it would occupy on the hierarchical scale) and V a the actual value on the same scale. For the estimation we considered type and intensity of the expected landscape disturbance and the foreseeable severity thereof, considering the ecological fragility and reversibility of each spatial unit and attribute, or loss of value in the case of standard of living and quality of life.…”

A procedure of landscape services assessment based on mosaics of patches and boundaries

“…A principal component analysis (PCA) was performed on this matrix. PCA is a commonly used technique in this type of study for integrating the partial values objectively, because it allows us to identify the trends in the variation of the partial land use values along the ordination axes (Montalvo et al, 1993;Ramírez-Sanz et al, 2000;Ruiz-Labourdette et al, 2010). Each axis is a linear combination of the partial land use values; thus, the coordinate of each land use k on axis j is given by…”