CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Reservas urbanas el caso Buenos Aires Perelman, P., Gropper C., Faggi A. Introduction Urban reserves (UR) are among green spaces, the most valuable areas used for conservation of regional diversity, outdoor recreation and environmental education. In the last decades important attempts have been made to evaluate UR considering management assessment and users perception. Methods In the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires we conducted objective and subjective assessment of 11 UR, located in the coastal flats and in the pampas plains. We analyzed characteristics like extension, number and type of ecosystems, distance from the city centre. For the subjective valuation we analyzed the opinion and attitude of visitors and residents performing interviews. Results The studied urban reserves protect 4683 ha of grasslands, wetlands, scrublands and forests. Their extensions range between 2 and 300 ha and the growing vegetation reflects the landscape transformations that took place as the city spread. Therefore most of them have periurban plant signatures with an increase in forest cover and evidence of invasion of exotic plants. Nevertheless half of the UR protects birds and mammals that are threatened for the region, indicating efficiency by the conservation of the biodiversity. The urban reserves are devoted to recreation and environmental education. Visitors come mainly on the weekends. While Buenos Aires city reserve is very much visited, also during the week, and becomes annually 600000 visitors, the other ones only received 8 to 28 visitors a day. Bad signalized accessibility, low contact with the vicinity, little participation of the local community, lack of fauna inventories and threats referring illegal occupation and extraction of resources (fauna, timber) are some of the weakness they share. Discussion In this presentation we discuss the significance of the urban reserves in the metropolis Buenos Aires for the visitors and the neighbors. Opinion and attitude of the visitors mirrored the objective valuation. Urban reserves show strengths and weaknesses, including differences in conservation efforts towards the W, E and N of the urban conglomerate. Our results also show differences between the utilization of the nature they offer between neighbors and visitors, with some different trend between the reserve located near down town in Buenos Aires city and those from the periphery. Our results are coincident with studies from other cities: nature-near areas are more less used by residents, having fewer acceptances as well maintained public urban green. While the reserve in Buenos Aires city does well, results show for the resting ones, the need to implement programs to improve integration with the neighbors.