Alejandra Carmona

Spatio-temporal effects of human drivers on fire danger in Mediterranean Chile

El objetivo de este estudio fue analizar la influencia de factores humanos, en especifico del cambio de cobertura y uso de suelo (CCUS), en el peligro de incendios forestales en una region mediterranea de Chile. Para ello, se evaluo la probabilidad de ignicion y la inflamabilidad del paisaje como componentes clave del peligro de incendio. La probabilidad de ignicion fue determinada a traves de una de regresion autologistica para los anos 1999 y 2009, utilizando como base los registros de la Corporacion Nacional Forestal y variables generadas a partir de bases de datos geograficas. La inflamabilidad se evaluo mediante la combinacion de las categorias de vegetacion presentes en el Catastro y evaluacion de recursos vegetacionales de Chile de 1999 y su actualizacion de 2009, y el modelo de combustible desarrollado por Julio (1995). Se llevo a cabo un analisis espacio-temporal de inflamabilidad el que se relaciono con los principales procesos CCUS (expansion de plantaciones, regeneracion forestal y abandono de tierras agricolas). Se combino la probabilidad de ignicion y el analisis de inflamabilidad para producir mapas de peligro de incendios. Los resultados mostraron que el peligro de incendio es un indicador dinamico que depende en gran medida de factores humanos. En 1999, las areas de alto peligro concentraron 31.399 hectareas, mientras que para el ano 2009 esta area aumento en 54.705 ha. En ambos periodos el peligro tuvo una distribucion espacial similar, concentrandose cerca de las carreteras, principales ciudades (26,3 % de la zona de peligro) y en areas cubiertas por plantaciones forestales (33,2 % de la superficie bajo peligro alto de incendio)

Focusing Conservation Efforts on Ecosystem Service Supply May Increase Vulnerability of Socio-Ecological Systems

Growing concern about the loss of ecosystem services (ES) promotes their spatial representation as a key tool for the internalization of the ES framework into land use policies. Paradoxically, mapping approaches meant to inform policy decisions focus on the magnitude and spatial distribution of the biophysical supply of ES, largely ignoring the social mechanisms by which these services influence human wellbeing. If social mechanisms affecting ES demand, enhancing it or reducing it, are taken more into account, then policies are more effective. By developing and applying a new mapping routine to two distinct socio-ecological systems, we show a strong spatial uncoupling between ES supply and socio-ecological vulnerability to the loss of ES, under scenarios of land use and cover change. Public policies based on ES supply might not only fail at detecting priority conservation areas for the wellbeing of human societies, but may also increase their vulnerability by neglecting areas of currently low, but highly valued ES supply.

Mapping social values of ecosystem services: What is behind the map?

A growing interest in mapping the social value of ecosystem services (ES) is not yet methodologically aligned with what is actually being mapped. We critically examine aspects of the social value mapping process that might influence map outcomes and limit their practical use in decision making. We rely on an empirical case of participatory mapping, for a single ES (recreation opportunities), which involves diverse stakeholders such as planners, researchers, and community representatives. Value elicitation relied on an individual open-ended interview and a mapping exercise. Interpretation of the narratives and GIS calculations of proximity, centrality, and dispersion helped in exploring the factors driving participants’ answers. Narratives reveal diverse value types. Whereas planners highlighted utilitarian and aesthetic values, the answers from researchers revealed naturalistic values as well. In turn community representatives acknowledged symbolic values. When remitted to the map, these values were constrained to statements toward a much narrower set of features of the physical (e.g., volcanoes) and built landscape (e.g., roads). The results suggest that mapping, as an instrumental approach toward social valuation, may capture only a subset of relevant assigned values. This outcome is the interplay between participants’ characteristics, including their acquaintance with the territory and their ability with maps, and the mapping procedure itself, including the proxies used to represent the ES and the value typology chosen, the elicitation question, the cartographic features displayed on the base map, and the spatial scale.