Mapping and spatial characterization of Argentine High Andean peatbogs

IZQUIERDO, A; FOGUET, J; GRAU, HR

WETLANDS ECOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT

SPRINGER

Lugar: Berlin; Año: 2015

0923-4861

Peatbogs are the most productive andbiodiversity rich ecosystems of high dry Puna region,and provide essential ecosystems services to localinhabitants. Despite their ecological and economicimportance, the geographic patterns and distributionof peatbogs as well the dynamic of this system arebarely known. In this work we (1) identified andmapped subtropical Argentine High Andean peatbogsbased in a supervised classification of Landsat images,and a posteriori spatial processing to define functionalunits; (2) used such classification to characterize thewhole Argentina Puna region (14.3 million hectares)in terms of their geographic patterns of peatbogs; and(3) characterized the region?s sub-watersheds accordingto their peatbogs density and geographic characteristics.The post-process map reports a total area ofpeatbogs of 94427.55 ha (0.66 % of total study area)with 10,428 polygons. The majority of peatbogs aresmall or median (i.e., 21.8 % of total area included ha, while 24.5 % of total area are peatbogs from10 to 50 ha), but only two peatbogs with[10,000 harepresent 18 % of total area. Peatbogs density isspatially heterogeneous, with much higher density inthe north and central east of the study area. Subwatershedcan be grouped into six main groupsaccording to the percentage of peatbogs cover, meansize of peatbogs and altitude. The combination ofbasic information, such as map of peatbogs cover withspatial patterns characterization, is a priority input forthe conservation planning of this extensive andvaluable ecosystem, and to ongoing land use planninginitiatives.