Priority areas for the restoration of native forests in Argentinian drylands

RUBIO, MARIA CLARA; RUBIO, MARIA CECILIA; CONY, MARIANO; FERMANI, SEBASTIAN; RUBIO, MARIA CLARA; CONY, MARIANO; RUBIO, MARIA CECILIA; FERMANI, SEBASTIAN

Cape Town

Conferencia; 8 th World Conference on Ecological Restoration SER 2019; 2019

SOCIETY FOR ECOLOGICALRESTORATION

The drastic climatic conditions combined with an indiscriminate exploitation of forest resources from Argentinian dry lands has led to increasing Desertification in these areas. As a part of the National Program for the Restoration of Degraded Native Forests, we identified priority areas to restore two large arid ecoregions in Argentina, the Monte Desert and the Espinal. We made a thorough assessment of several physical, biological, and anthropic indicators integrated in the field of geographic information systems and remotesensing with Multi-criteria Decision Analysis -specifically with Analytic Hierarchy Methods-. The criteria used were: native forest land management, number of management and conservation plans per river basin, drainage density, slope, trend of net primary productivity 2001-2017, influence area of human settlements and road network, 2000-2017 fire occurrence, livestock density, and land use, land cover changes, and soil carbon stock changes. We also analyzed the feasibility of implementing active and passive restoration practices in each area. As such, we obtained seven major priority areas for restoration (1.7 Mha). The Argentinian government used the defined priority areas to the call for restoration projects of native forests, which are currently under execution.