Modeling endangered species? forest habitats, and updating forest land use plans in Argentina in support of the UN Sustainable Development Goals

PIDGEON ANNA; MARTINUZZI SEBASTIÁN; OLAH ASHLEY; MARTINEZ PASTUR GUILLERMO; RIVERA LUIS; OLIVERA SILVEIRA EDUARDA; RADELOFF VOLKER; POLITI NATALIA; LIZARRAGA, LEONIDAS; ROSAS YAMINA

Congreso; North American Congress for Conservation Biology; 2020

The UN?s sustainable development goal No. 15 is to ?protect, restore, and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems and their services, sustainably manage forests, ? andhalt biodiversity loss.? Achieving this goal requires land use planning based on state-of-the art forest monitoring and species? habitat models in the context of climate change. Argentina established a national forest land use planning strategy in 2007 (National Forest Law N 26331) but to date, when establishing zones of different allowable activities in their forests, the provincial and national governments have rarely incorporated biodiversity information. We developed new remote sensing spatio-temporal indices to characterize and map forest habitats and phenology, and developed a map of the human footprint in Argentina. We identified hotspots of risk and resilience to climate variability. We are using these tools together with spatial data on current levels of protection, to identify areas of forest wilderness and resilience to climate change. We are working with national and regional land use planning entities to integrate high conservation value areas in regional forest plans, with the goal of reducing the rate of biodiversity loss and making progress toward sustainable forest management.