Designing multifunctional forest systems in Northern Patagonia, Argentina

GARIBALDI, LUCAS A.; ZERMOGLIO, PAULA F.; AGÜERO, JUAN I.; NACIF, MARCOS E.; GOLDENBERG, MATÍAS G.; FIORONI, FACUNDO; AMOROSO, MARIANO M.; APARICIO, ALEJANDRO G.; DIMARCO, ROMINA D.; FERNÁNDEZ, MARGARITA M.; FERNÁNDEZ, NATALIA V.; GAMBINO, MICAELA; NAÓN, SANTIAGO; NÚÑEZ, MARTÍN A.; ODDI, FACUNDO J.; PASTORINO, MARIO J.; PUNTIERI, JAVIER G.

Frontiers In Sustainable Food Systems

Frontiers Media SA

Año: 2024 vol. 8

Multifunctional productive systems based on native species management, a new paradigm that counters colonial worldviews, offersustainable sources of food and materials while preserving biodiversity. Despite extensive discussions in herbaceous andagricultural systems, applying this concept to native forests in Northern Patagonia remains unclear. Multifunctional systemimplementation can be approached from a fractal perspective, with evaluations at the stand level being essential forunderstanding ecological processes across scales. Here, we exemplify research and management for multiple native species,integrating results from ten years of field experiments on the impacts of biomass harvesting intensity (HI) on nine Nature´sContributions to People (NCPs), including habitat creation, pollination, soil formation, hazard regulation, prevention of invasions,and provision of energy, food, materials, and options. Our findings reveal that some regulating NCPs peak with null HI, whilecertain material and regulating NCPs maximize at the highest HI. Low to intermediate HI (30-50 %) show a more balancedprovision of all NCPs. Our results suggest that some biomass extraction is necessary to enhance most NCPs, emphasizing theimportance of balancing material provisioning and biodiversity conservation in management schemes. We propose futuredirections for designing multifunctional forest systems, advocating for low-density plantation of native tree species with highwood quality within the natural forest matrix. This approach may yield higher NCPs levels over time compared to the currentcattle breeding and wood extraction system, with implications beyond Patagonia, considering historical associations of suchpractices with colonial worldviews globally.