Methodological proposal for a social-ecological land planning. Case studies along urban-rural gradientes in Madrid Region

Tesis Doctoral inédita leída en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Ecología. Fecha de lectura: 3-12-2018Está asociada al proyecto de I+D “excelencia” del Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Evaluación de los flujos de servicios de los ecosistemas en gradientes rural-urbanos: aplicabilidad a la planificación socio-ecológica del territorio (ECOGRADIENTES; CGL2014-53782-P)

Plataforma colaborativa global para identificación y medición de espacios objeto de mejora en el marco de la Agenda 20/30

The lack of technical or human resources present in most of the world's municipalities prevents the creation and access to spatial information. Collaborative processes have shown that they are capable of mapping the world with sufficient precision. But it is not enough to describe the physical structure of the territory, the roads, or the buildings, it is also necessary to obtain information on the living conditions of its inhabitants and on the state of its development. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) are influencing decision-making in many governments through demographic and economic statistical techniques, but they do not measure or spatially locate the problems. OSDGM is proposed as a collaborative and open system to identify, delimit and measure the spaces where the living conditions and development of its inhabitants must be improved. Keywords: SGG, participatory processes, OpenGIS .En la mayoría de los municipios del mundo no es posible crear y obtener información espacial por la inexistencia de medios técnicos o humanos. Sin embargo, la colaboración ha demostrado que es capaz de cartografiar el mundo con la suficiente precisión y actualización. Pero no basta con describir la estructura física del territorio, las vías o los edificios, es necesario además obtener información sobre las condiciones de vida de sus habitantes y sobre el estado de su desarrollo. Los SGD/ODS Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible están incidiendo profundamente en muchos gobiernos para mejorar esas condiciones de vida y de desarrollo, y lo hacen mediante estadísticas demográficas y económicas, pero no miden ni localizan espacialmente los problemas. OSDGM se propone como un sistema colaborativo y abierto, para identificar, delimitar y medir los espacios donde las condiciones de vida y desarrollo de sus habitantes deben ser objeto de mejora. Palabras clave: ODS, procesos participativos , OpenGIS, .Peer Reviewe

MAPA URBANÍSTICO DE ESPAÑA. Geoportal de servicios abiertos de mapas de urbanismo publicados en España

Geographic information systems (GIS) are increasingly necessary. The Land and Urban Rehabilitation Law requires the publication of urban data digitally. To date, most of the 8,000 Spanish municipalities comply with the Law by publishing their urban plans in PDF format, but very few publish urban data using interactive systems, despite the fact that most Communities have Technical Standards that require plans digital. The Urban Map of Spain is a Geoportal with a catalog of planning WEB services to display, on a continuous map, information from neighboring administrations, or superimpose maps of institutions that share a territory, applying transparencies, divided screens or curtains, in order to be able to compare them. This highlights the lack of homogeneity in the information published, the low percentage of municipalities that do so, and the need to implement common criteria to obtain verifiable information. Keywords: Digital territory, web maps, web catalog, GIS.Los SIG han ganado protagonismo en las últimas décadas. La Ley de Suelo y Rehabilitación Urbana obliga a publicar los datos urbanísticos de forma digital. Hasta el momento, la mayoría de los 8.000 municipios españoles cumple la Ley publicando sus planes urbanísticos en formato PDF, pero son muy pocos los que publican datos urbanísticos utilizando sistemas interactivos, a pesar de que la mayoría de las Comunidades tienen Normas Técnicas que exigen planes digitales. El Mapa urbanístico de España es un Geoportal con un catálogo de servicios WEB de planeamiento para visualizar, en un mapa continuo, informaciones procedentes de administraciones colindantes, o superponer mapas de instituciones que comparten un territorio, aplicando transparencias, pantallas divididas o cortinillas, para poder compararlos. Con ello pone de manifiesto la falta de homogeneidad en la información publicada, el bajo porcentaje de municipios que lo hacen y la necesidad de implementar criterios comunes para lograr información contrastable. Palabras clave: territorio digital, mapas web, catálogo web, GIS.Peer Reviewe

High Nature Value Farming Systems and Protected Areas: Conservation Opportunities or Land Abandonment? A Study Case in the Madrid Region (Spain)

European rural landscapes contain high nature value farmlands that, in addition to being the main economic activity in many rural areas, host habitats and species of great conservation value. The maintenance of these farming systems largely depends on traditional ecological knowledge and the rural lifestyles of the local populations. However, they have not been sufficiently appreciated and protected, and as a result, they are currently threatened. In this study, which was performed in the Madrid region (central Spain), we analyse the social-ecological changes of the rural landscape after the establishment of a protected natural area network. The obtained results highlight a significant loss of these high nature value farming systems and a marked increase in the rewilding processes characterised by scrub–forest transition and the development of forest systems. These processes are linked to the disruption of the transmission of traditional ecological knowledge, which may imply negative consequences for both the high biocultural diversity that these systems host and the cultural identity and the socioeconomics of the rural populations that live there. A useful methodological tool is provided for social–ecological land planning and the design of effective management strategies for the conservation of rural cultural landscapes

Can We Foresee Landscape Interest? Maximum Entropy Applied to Social Media Photographs: A Case Study in Madrid

Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES) are undervalued and poorly understood compared to other types of ecosystem services. The sociocultural preferences of the different actors who enjoy a landscape are intangible aspects of a complex evaluation. Landscape photographs available on social media have opened up the possibility of quantifying landscape values and ecosystem services that were previously difficult to measure. Thus, a new research methodology has been developed based on the spatial distribution of geotagged photographs that, based on probabilistic models, allows us to estimate the potential of the landscape to provide CES. This study tests the effectiveness of predictive models from MaxEnt, a software based on a machine learning technique called the maximum entropy approach, as tools for land management and for detecting CES hot spots. From a sample of photographs obtained from the Panoramio network, taken between 2007 and 2008 in the Lozoya Valley in Madrid (Central Spain), we have developed a predictive model of the future and compared it with the photographs available on the social network between 2009 and 2015. The results highlight a low correspondence between the prediction of the supply of CES and its real demand, which indicates that MaxEnt is not a sufficiently useful predictive tool in complex and changing landscapes such as the one studied here

Detecting social‑ecological resilience thresholds of cultural landscapes along an urban–rural gradient: a methodological approach based on Bayesian Networks

Context: The difficulty of analysing resilience and threshold responses to changing environmental drivers becomes evident in the social-ecological systems framework due to their inherent complexity. Research is needed to develop new tools able to deal with such challenges and determine potential thresholds for SES variables that primarily influence tipping point behaviour. Objectives: In this paper, a methodology based on the application of Bayesian Networks (BNs) has been developed to quantify the social-ecological resilience along an urban–rural gradient in Madrid Region, detecting the tipping point values of the main socioeconomic indicators implying critical transitions at landscape stability thresholds. Method: To do this, the spatial–temporal trends of the landscape in an urban–rural gradient from Region de Madrid (Spain) were identified, to then quantify the intensity of the changes and explain them using BNs based on regression models. Finally, through inference propagation the thresholds of landscape change were detected. Results: The results obtained for the study area indicate that the most resilient landscapes analysed are those where the traditional silvo-pastoral activity was maintained by elderly people and where there is cohesion between neighbouring rural municipalities. Conclusion: The method developed has allowed us to detect the tipping points from which small changes in socioeconomic indicators generate large changes at the landscape level. We demonstrate that the use of BNs is a useful tool to achieve an integrated socialecological spatial planning

Protected Landscapes in Spain: Reasons for Protection and Sustainability of Conservation Management

Landscape conservation efforts in many European countries focus on cultural landscapes, which are part of the cultural identity of people, have a great heritage significance, improve the living standards of local populations and provide valuable cultural biodiversity. However, despite a wide arrange of protective measures, the management of preserved areas is seldom effective for the protection of cultural landscapes. Through a multi-approach analysis, we characterise the main heritage attributes of 17 Protected Landscapes in Spain and assess their management effectiveness by quantifying the evolution of the spatial pattern inside and outside protected landscapes. Our method has proven useful to quantitatively describe the spatial-temporal patterns of change of the protected and unprotected landscapes studied. We highlight the following results: (i) the concepts of uniqueness and naturalness are not appropriate to preserve cultural landscapes; (ii) the land protection approach currently adopted is not useful for the protection of cultural landscapes, particularly of the most rural ones; (iii) the landscapes studied with greater rural features can be considered as “paper parks”. We recommend that different protection measures focused on the needs and desires of the rural population are taken into account in order to protect cultural landscapes that are shaped by traditional rural activities

Aprender divulgando: mejora del aprendizaje de conceptos y de la expresión oral y escrita mediante la divulgación científica

Depto. de Biodiversidad, Ecología y EvoluciónFac. de Ciencias BiológicasFALSEsubmitte

Recreational and Nature-Based Tourism as a Cultural Ecosystem Service. Assessment and Mapping in a Rural-Urban Gradient of Central Spain

Land management focused from the social-ecological perspective of ecosystem services should consider cultural services in decision-making processes. Nature-based tourism offers a great potential for landscape conservation, local development and the well-being of human populations. However, the subjectivity of recreational ecosystem services has meant a clear impediment to assessing and mapping them. In this study, an integrated numerical spatial method is developed, which quantifies the supply and demand of recreational ecosystem services and allows mapping their spatial correspondence along a rural-urban gradient. The procedure also allows quantifying the influence of the landscape structure and the presence of protected areas on the degree of coupling between supply of recreational ecosystem services and demand for outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism and reveals that protected areas are hotspots of recreational ecosystem services. The results obtained highlight the usefulness of the methodological procedure developed as a tool for sustainable land planning and management from an integrative social-ecological approach