Memorias del taller de expertos en el tema de estimación de reservas y monitoreo de carbono en páramos y humedales

Documento técnico que resume las experiencias y aportes dados por los expertos de las temáticas evaluadas, estimación y monitoreo de carbono en biomasa áreas y en suelos.BogotáPáramos: Biodiversidad y Recursos Hídricos en los Andes del Nort

From urban meteorology, climate and environment research to integrated city services

Accelerating growth of urban populations, especially in developing countries, has become a driving force of human development. Crowded cities are centres of creativity and economic progress, but polluted air, flooding and other climate impacts, means they also face major weather, climate and environment-related challenges. Increasingly dense, complex and interdependent urban systems leave cities vulnerable: a single extreme event can lead to a widespread breakdown of a city’s infrastructure often through domino effects. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) recognizes that rapid urbanization necessitates new types of services which make the best use of science and technology and considers the challenge of delivering these as one of the main priorities for the meteorological community. Such Integrated Urban Weather, Environment and Climate Services should assist cities in facing hazards such as storm surges, flooding, heat waves, and air pollution episodes, especially in changing climates. The aim is to build urban services that meet the special needs of cities through a combination of dense observation networks, high-resolution forecasts, multi-hazard early warning systems, and climate services for reducing emissions, that will enable the building of resilient, thriving sustainable cities that promote the Sustainable Development Goals. A number of recent international studies have been initiated to explore these issues. The paper provides a brief overview of recent WMO and collaborators research programs and activities in urban hydrometeorology, climate and air pollution; describes the novel concept of urban integrated weather, climate and environment related services; and highlights research needs for their realisation

Are we overestimating the niche? Removing marginal localities helps ecological niche models detect environmental barriers

Correlative ecological niche models (ENMs) estimate species niches using occurrence records and environmental data. These tools are valuable to the field of biogeography, where they are commonly used to infer potential connectivity among populations. However, a recent study showed that when locally relevant environmental data are not available, records from patches of suitable habitat protruding into otherwise unsuitable regions (e.g., gallery forests within dry areas) can lead to overestimations of species niches and their potential distributions. Here, we test whether this issue obfuscates detection of an obvious environmental barrier existing in northern Venezuela – that of the hot and xeric lowlands separating the Penınsula de Paraguana from mainland South America. These conditions most likely promote isolation between mainland and peninsular populations of three rodent lineages occurring in mesic habitat in this region. For each lineage, we calibrated optimally parameterized ENMs using mainland records only, and leveraged existing habitat descriptions to assess whether those assigned low suitability values corresponded to instances where the species was collected within locally mesic conditions amidst otherwise hot dry areas. When this was the case, we built an additional model excluding these records. We projected both models onto the peninsula and assessed whether they differed in their ability to detect the environmental barrier. For the two lineages in which we detected such problematic records, only the models built excluding them detected the barrier, while providing additional insights regarding peninsular populations. Overall, the study reveals how a simple procedure like the one applied here can deal with records problematic for ENMs, leading to better predictions regarding the potential effects of the environment on lineage divergence

Geophysical and botanical monitoring of simulated graves in a tropical rainforest, Colombia, South America

In most Latin American countries there are significant numbers of missing people and forced disappearances, currently ~74,000 only in Colombia. Successful detection of shallow buried human remains by forensic search teams is currently difficult in varying terrain and climates. Within this research we built four simulated clandestine burial styles in tropical rainforests, as this is a common scenario and depositional environment encountered in Latin America, to gain knowledge of optimum forensic geophysics detection techniques. The results of geophysically monitoring these burials using ground penetrating radar, magnetic susceptibility, bulk ground conductivity and electrical resistivity are presented from one to forty three weeks post-burial. Radar survey results with both the 250 MHz and 500 MHz frequency antennae showed good detection of modern simulated burials on 2D profiles and horizontal time slices but poor detection on the other simulated graves. Magnetic susceptibility, bulk ground conductivity and electrical resistivity results were generally poor at detecting the simulated targets. Observations of botanical variations on the test site show rapid re-growth of Malvaceae and Petiveria alliacea vegetation over all burials that are common in these forests, which can make detection more difficult

Water urbanism in Bogotá. Exploring the potentials of an interplay between settlement patterns and water management

A paradigm shift in water management is recognized as a necessary and fundamental step for adaptation to climate change and crucial for furthering sustainability. In contexts of rapid urbanization, this paradigm shift is particularly challenged since social and environmental needs often come into conflict. In Bogotá, as other Latin-American cities, demands for new housing are increasing daily, while the overall housing deficit remains an unresolved problem. Currently, the city faces the challenges to deal with the pressure to continue to urbanize flood prone areas with low-cost housing projects and simultaneously protect these areas in view of flooding, which promise to increase with the predictions of climate change. In order to contribute to context-responsive solutions to the water and housing issues, this paper investigates the shifting relations between settlement patterns, water infrastructure and landscape in Bogotá's El Tintal watershed. This sub-watershed of the Bogotá River has a rich history of formal and informal low-cost housing. The critical reading of the landscape transformation of the El Tintal has shown how the water system interventions were and can be instrumental in different stages of development. This reading was the base to elaborate design investigations that could translate to spatial adaptation measures. This paper argues that “soft” water management tools can be part of a twofold strategy to create spatial quality and provide resilience for more qualitative future urban development

Integrated urban hydrometeorological, climate and environmental services: concept, methodology and key messages

Integrated Urban hydrometeorological, climate and environmental Services (IUS) is a WMO initiative to aid development of science-based integrated urban services to support safe, healthy, resilient and climate friendly cities. As part of this initiative, Guidance for Integrated Urban Hydrometeorological, Climate and Environmental Services (Volume I) has been developed. The intent of the guidance is to provide an overview of the concept, methods and good practices for producing and providing the services cities require to respond to the hazards across arrange of time scales (weather to climate). Such services involve combing (dense) observation networks, high-resolution forecasts, multi-hazard early warning systems, and climate services. These services should assist cities in setting and implementing mitigation and adaptation strategies that will enable the management and building of resilient and sustainable cities. A multidisciplinary approach helps to meet the social-economic needs. IUS include research, evaluation and delivery with a wide agency participation from city governments, national hydrometeorological services, international organizations, research institutions and private sector stakeholders. An overview of the IUS concept with a few examples of good practices is presented. Key messages and recommendations are provided. Given research agencies globally expect research to provide “Impact” and the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals the urban climate research community will play an important role in helping to deliver IUS internationally. Between us our contributions are needed at all scales: to support local and national communities to delivery IUS and to identify critical research challenges that become apparent as IU

Low emission development strategies in agriculture. An agriculture, forestry, and other land uses (AFOLU) perspective

As countries experience economic growth and choose among available development pathways, they are in a favorable position to adopt natural resource use technologies and production practices that favor efficient use of inputs, healthy soils, and ecosystems. Current emphasis on increasing resilience to climate change and reducing agricultural greenhouse gasses (GHG) emissions strengthens the support for sustainable agricultural production. In fact, reducing losses in soil fertility, reclaiming degraded lands, and promoting synergistic interaction between crop production and forests are generally seen as good climate change policies. In order for decision-makers to develop long-term policies that address these issues, they must have tools at their disposal that evaluate trade-offs, opportunities, and repercussions of the options considered. In this paper, the authors combine and reconcile the output of three models widely accessible to the public to analyze the impacts of policies that target emission reduction in the agricultural sector. We present an application to Colombia which reveals the importance of considering the full scope of interactions among the various land uses. Results indicate that investments in increasing the efficiency and productivity of the livestock sector and reducing land allocated to pasture are preferable to policies that target deforestation alone or target a reduction of emissions in crop production. Investments in livestock productivity and land-carrying capacity would reduce deforestation and provide sufficient gains in carbon stock to offset greater emissions from increased crop production while generating higher revenues

International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) Report 56

The IGAC Science Plan and Implementation Strategy lays out the scientific objectives and key research issues of the atmospheric chemistry project of the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme (IGBP) as both IGAC and IGBP enter their second phase. It also lays out a framework for addressing these objectives and issues, recognizing the need for collaboration with partner programmes and projects. The scientific focus of this document emerged from the first decade of IGAC research, much of which was conducted in the context of focused, intensive measurement campaigns. The scope of IGAC in its next phase includes both regional characterisation and the extension into issues that cross more expansive boundaries in space, time and discipline. While local and regional-scale atmospheric chemical composition will be a primary focus, it is now clear that issues such as intercontinental transport and transformation of chemically active species and the interactions between atmospheric chemistry and climate must also be addressed in order to better understand atmospheric chemical composition and to provide guidance to the public and policy-making community