Climate Change, Ecosystems, and Forest Fires: Analytical Scales for Regional Policies

TUNINETTI LUIS E.; GUZMÁN LETICIA ANA; FERNANDO FORGIONI

Conferencia; International Conference on sustainable Development; 2023

Climate change is, without a doubt, the main problem for humanity in the medium and long term, with relevance both at a global, national, regional and local level.Among the multiple impacts of the climate crisis is the intensification of forest fires. After them, landscape transformations with ecosystem loss and possible changes in land use, both urban and agricultural, are presented.In this sense, it is essential to recognize the ecosystemic, cultural, social and institutional dynamics of the affected systems. For this, the comprehensive analysis at the river basin level implies, first, knowing where one lives, where the environmental goods and services from which society as a whole benefits come from. Water, biodiversity, soil, and forests fulfill various functions and are related based on the integrating element water, which encompasses in its network of streams and rivers an inseparable connection between the upper basin and the lower basin.For this reason, the research project aims to analyze the post-fire ecological succession in the areas burned in the last 10 years in the middle and lower basin of the Ctalamochita River in the Province of Córdoba, Argentina. Understanding that basin ecosystems are of great relevance for life and present remarkable fragility.The methodology that will be used will be of a mixed type, in which, on the one hand, the analysis and processing of satellite images and field survey will be carried out to determine the uses of the land. Sampling of the vegetation will be carried out to estimate the value of the parameters of the population found, the sampling units will be located in units considered typical or representative. On the other hand, an analysis of the landscape dynamics in the systems affected by the fires will be carried out.Likewise, public policies that are directly or indirectly linked to climate change must be not only international or national, but also local and regional; Argentina has adopted policies to address climate change, but there are still barriers and challenges to their effective implementation. At the provincial level, the last environmental management report carried out by the Ministry of the Environment (2021) addresses the problem but focuses on the diagnosis of greenhouse gas emissions and environmental education, leaving aside adaptation to climate impacts; For this reason, the research will seek, with interviews and surveys, to demonstrate the articulation between public policies on climate change and the territorial realities of the burned ecosystems.The importance of the project lies in the relevance for the life of the inhabitants of the region and the lack of precedents on the subject in the middle and lower basin of the Ctalamochita river (Córdoba - Argentina), where ecosystemic aspects, climate change, the problem of forest fires and environmental policy; that are addressed from an interdisciplinary perspective, understanding the complexity of the system and that proposes guidelines or alternatives to the political-environmental management of the area.