Global change issues are becoming an important point in the agenda of policy makers. Land cover change, one of the dimensions of global change, is a critical driver of environmental alterations at different scales, from local to global. To face the environmental problems associated to land use changes a reliable characterization of the spatial patterns of land cover, and to proper description of the processes and factors controlling the changes are needed. The Pampas are one of the most important agricultural areas of the world. However, the spatial pattern of land use has not been properly characterized. Even scarcer is the information on the environmental controls of the land use patterns.
Because of its strong relationship to sustainability and ecosystem health, the definition and valuation of ecosystem services is concentrating a great deal of attention nowadays. According to Daily (1997) the ecosystem services are those conditions and processes of the ecosystem through which natural ecosystems sustain human life. Some of these ecosystem services have a market value (for example forage, seafood, grain, timber) and they are, consequently, easy to value. Many of the services provided by the environment, though essential to support life in Earth, are not included into the economic system. How to value these services is a task that is challenging ecologists and economists. Land use change affects dramatically the ability of the ecosystem to provide such services. In a global analysis Costanza et al. (1997) estimated that the annual value of 17 ecosystem services of 16 biomes worldwide is greater than the global gross national product.
Let suppose that the Secretary of Natural Resources and Environment of the federal government of Argentina is interested defining active policies regarding the effect of land use/land cover changes on ecosystem services. You, as part of a team, are hired to find quantitative answer to the following questions:
1) Which are the spatial patterns of land use in the argentine pampas?
2) What are the environmental factors (climatic and edaphic) determining the spatial patterns of land use in this area? What is the relative importance of these factors in determining land use patterns?
3) What is the impact of landuse on ecosystem functioning?
An additional objective that you have to address is to evaluate quantitatively the effect of landuse on the services provided by the ecosystems in the argentine pampas.
Ecosystems services in grasslands
The impact of land use on ecosystem functioning
Costanza, R., R. d‘Arge, R. de Groot, S. Farber, M. Grasso, B. Hannon, K. Limburg, S. Naeem, R.V. O’Neill, J.Paruelo, R.G. Raskin, P. Sutton y M.Van den Belt. 1997 The value of the world?s ecosystem services and natural capital. Nature 357:253-260. up
Daily, G. 1997. Nature’s services: Societal dependence on natural ecosystems.
Island Press Washington DC. up