Digital conservation in biosphere reserves

In the “digital conservation” age, big data from Earth observations and from social media have been increasingly used to tackle conservation challenges. In this paper, led by Sofía Vaz from IISTA-CEAMA (Granada, Spain), we combined information from those two digital sources in a multimodel inference framework to identify, map, and predict the potential for nature's cultural contributions to people in two contrasting UNESCO biosphere reserves: Doñana and Sierra Nevada (Spain).

The content analysis of social media photographs showed a dominance of different categories of nature's cultural contributions, in agreement with the natural and cultural capital of these biosphere reserves. Those contributions also related with different Earth observation predictors, being mostly shaped by visual‐sensory attributes that characterize Doñana landscapes, and by points of leisure interest, landscape heterogeneity, and environmental accessibility that shape Sierra Nevada. The analytical framework proposed in this study is reproducible in other (protected) areas, and it can aid in the cost‐efficient monitoring of nature's contributions to people.


Vaz, AS; Moreno‐Llorca, RA; Gonçalves, JF; Vicente, JR; Méndez, PF; Revilla, E; Santamaria, L; Bonet‐García, FJ; Honrado, JP; Alcaraz‐Segura, D (2020) Digital conservation in biosphere reserves: Earth observations, social media, and nature's cultural contributions to people. Conservation Letters, e12704. DOI: 10.1111/conl.12704

Sunrise in the marshes, on our way to install the last GPS collars of this year on Doñana's largest herbivores (cows and horses).

The collars will send the positions of 60 individuals who roam freely in Doñana's scrubland and marshland, providing key data on their movement ecology, foraging choices and behavior.

Interested in project GRAZE? See more details on the project's web and facebook sites.

Explaining Doñana's rigidity traps

To be successful, transitions toward sustainability must be guided by a sound understanding of the architecture of the policy and institutional designs.

In this paper, a team led by Pablo F. Mendez explores the institutional conditions necessary for successful transitions toward sustainability in the social-ecological systems of the Doñana region (Guadalquivir estuary, southwest Spain). First, they provide an historical explanation of the reasons whereby Doñana's social-ecological system is stuck in a maladaptive rigidity trap. Second, they explore how (i) political-economic interests, prevailing discourses and power; and (ii) institutional entrepreneurship, have shaped Doñana's maladaptive outcome.

The authors argue that contingency can be modulated away from randomness and better characterized as unpredictability, through the systematic inclusion of these factors into analysis. This would, in turn, increase the capacity to inform future policy and institutional transitional designs toward sustainability.

Seed dispersal symposium in Wageningen

Plant production in seasonal wetlands

Plant primary production is a key driver of several ecosystem functions in seasonal marshes, such as water purification and secondary production by wildlife and domestic animals. Estimating the spatio-temporal dynamics of biomass production is however challenging in seasonal wetlands with variable flooding regimes.

In this paper, stemming from the MSc Thesis developed by Maria Lumbierres in out group, we develop a method to estimate standing aboveground plant biomass using NDVI Land Surface Phenology (LSP) derived from MODIS, and follow to calibrate and validate it in the Doñana National Park’s marsh vegetation. The estimator was robust to environmental variation in precipitation and hydroperiod, and to spatial variation in the productivity and composition of the plant community - and may represent a key tool for the long-term monitoring and management of seasonal marsh ecosystems.

Model predictions indicate that the marsh areas with highest productivity coincide with those in which productivity has been declining during the last 16 years—suggesting changes in flooding patterns and/or the potential effect of overgrazing by wild and domestic herbivores. Further work will hopefully allow us to disentangle these two proceses.

Lumbierres, M., Méndez, P. F., Bustamante, J., Soriguer, R., & Santamaría, L. (2017). Modeling biomass production in seasonal wetlands using MODIS NDVI land surface phenology. Remote Sensing 9: 392.

Migratory Birds as Global Dispersal Vectors

 

After many years of work in the elusive process of long-distance dispersal by migratory birds, we feel ready to make the huge leap that separates the phenomenological description of an essentially unpredictable process, to modeling and forecasting a challenging but predictable one.

Can we suceed? This paper synthesizes our view of the state of the art and our proposal for future research. We believe in its importance, and will be happy to hear your opinion.

Viana, D., Santamaría, L., Figuerola, J. (2016) Migratory birds as global dispersal vectors. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 31: 763-75.