Ecosystem functioning and geographic conservation priorities assessment

Abstract

Cabello,  J.,  Alcaraz-Segura,  D.,  Altesor,  A.,  Delibes,  M.,  Baeza,  S.,  Liras,E.  (2008).  Ecosystem  functioning  and  geographic conservation priorities assessment. Ecosistemas 17(3):53-63.

This  article  shows  the  potential  of  remote  sensing  techniques,  based  on  the  descriptions  of  ecosystem  functional  attributes,  to  solve classical questions of conservation biology. We present an analysis aimed to evaluate how the protected area networks in two countries, Spain and Uruguay, represent the national ecosystems diversity. First, we identified the functional space (continuum approach) of natural vegetation in each country, using two functional attributes derived from vegetation indices (VI), mean VI (VI-I) and relative range (RREL). The VI-I is an estimator of the fraction of photosynthetic active radiation absorbed by the canopy, and the RREL is a surrogate of the seasonality of  radiation  interception.  The  functional  space  defined  in  this  way  constitutes  a  rapid  way  to  describe  the  whole  ecosystems  variability within a region. Moreover, it allows the evaluation of the representation of the network, as the used variables are related to ecosystems’ response to the regional environmental gradient. Thus, this methodology identifies not only the common and singular protected areas in each country,  but  also  the  gaps  in  the  network,  and  how  redundant  or  complementary  are  the  protected  areas  in  the  national  context  of ecosystem functioning.