Conserving Ecosystem Diversity in the Tropical Andes

Documenting temporal trends in the extent of ecosystems is essential to monitoring their status but combining this information with the degree of protection helps us assess the effectiveness of societal actions for conserving ecosystem diversity and related ecosystem services. We demonstrated indicators in the Tropical Andes using both potential (pre-industrial) and recent (~2010) distribution maps of terrestrial ecosystem types. We measured long-term ecosystem loss, representation of ecosystem types within the current protected areas, quantifying the additional representation offered by protecting Key Biodiversity Areas. Six (4.8%) ecosystem types (i.e., measured as 126 distinct vegetation macrogroups) have lost >50% in extent across four Andean countries since pre-industrial times. For ecosystem type representation within protected areas, regarding the pre-industrial extent of each type, a total of 32 types (25%) had higher representation (>30%) than the post-2020 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) draft target in existing protected areas. Just 5 of 95 types (5.2%) within the montane Tropical Andes hotspot are currently represented with >30% within the protected areas. Thirty-nine types (31%) within these countries could cross the 30% CBD 2030 target with the addition of Key Biodiversity Areas. This indicator is based on the Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBV) and responds directly to the needs expressed by the users of these countries

Carbon and Beyond:The Biogeochemistry of Climate in a Rapidly Changing Amazon

The Amazon Basin is at the center of an intensifying discourse about deforestation, land-use, and global change. To date, climate research in the Basin has overwhelmingly focused on the cycling and storage of carbon (C) and its implications for global climate. Missing, however, is a more comprehensive consideration of other significant biophysical climate feedbacks [i.e., CH4, N2O, black carbon, biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs), aerosols, evapotranspiration, and albedo] and their dynamic responses to both localized (fire, land-use change, infrastructure development, and storms) and global (warming, drying, and some related to El Niño or to warming in the tropical Atlantic) changes. Here, we synthesize the current understanding of (1) sources and fluxes of all major forcing agents, (2) the demonstrated or expected impact of global and local changes on each agent, and (3) the nature, extent, and drivers of anthropogenic change in the Basin. We highlight the large uncertainty in flux magnitude and responses, and their corresponding direct and indirect effects on the regional and global climate system. Despite uncertainty in their responses to change, we conclude that current warming from non-CO2 agents (especially CH4 and N2O) in the Amazon Basin largely offsets—and most likely exceeds—the climate service provided by atmospheric CO2 uptake. We also find that the majority of anthropogenic impacts act to increase the radiative forcing potential of the Basin. Given the large contribution of less-recognized agents (e.g., Amazonian trees alone emit ~3.5% of all global CH4), a continuing focus on a single metric (i.e., C uptake and storage) is incompatible with genuine efforts to understand and manage the biogeochemistry of climate in a rapidly changing Amazon Basin

Mapping Forest Disturbances across the Southwestern Amazon: Tradeoffs between Open-Source, Landsat-Based Algorithms.

Local and cross-continental road building, increased economic teleconnections, growing agricultural demands, logging and mining practices, and general development processes are putting pressure on even the least densely populated regions of the Amazon, where local, regional, and global demand for food, fuel and fiber are resulting in observable biophysical effects. It is essential, then, that stakeholders can both map and understand the effects of these forest disturbances on ecosystem services. Multiple remote sensing algorithms focused on detecting vegetation changes have been developed: the challenge now lies in understanding which algorithm best suits the user´s study area and research objective. Using Google Earth Engine, we compared the performance of three algorithms –Continuous Degradation Detection (CODED), Landsat-based detection of trends in disturbance and recovery (LandTrendr), and Multi-variate Time-series Disturbance Detection (MTDD)– to detect and characterize forest disturbances in the Southwestern Amazon (Ucayali, Peru and Acre, Brazil) during the 2000–2020 period. In general, the results of all of the algorithms agreed with the reference data: overall accuracies were 94% (± 0.6% LandTrendr), 95% (±0.6% MTDD), and 96% (± 0.6% CODED). Although the map products exhibit similar spatial patterns, they often differ on the specific disturbance extent. CODED works well in capturing disturbances associated with roads, MTDD excels best at capturing entire disturbance patches, and LandTrendr excels both in terms of user friendliness and range of output options. Through three case study regions, we highlight land-cover change dynamics that have occurred in this remote, transboundary region over the last two decades. We also describe the strengths and weaknesses of each algorithm and demonstrate that it would be incorrect to assume that any one algorithm is the most accurate. Our work, then, improves the capacity of the community to understand how well each algorithm is suited best to map various forest disturbances to promote sustainable decision making

El futuro del desarrollo de petr\uf3leo y gas en la Amazon\ueda occidental

La Amazon\ueda occidental es una de las \ufaltimas zonas de mayor biodiversidad del mundo, caracterizada por su extraordinaria riqueza de especies y sus grandes extensiones de bosque tropical h\ufamedo carente de v\uedas de acceso. Tambi\ue9n es un lugar donde yace un importante sector hidrocarburifero activo (petr\uf3leo y gas), caracterizado por operaciones en \ue1reas extremadamente remotas que requieren nuevas v\uedas de acceso. A continuaci\uf3n presentamos el primer an\ue1lisis integral de la asociaci\uf3n entre el sector hidrocarburhidrocarbur\uedfero y la construcci\uf3n de carreteras en la Amazon\ueda occidental. En concreto, documentamos (a) el panorama actual, incluyendo la ubicaci\uf3n y el estado de desarrollo de todos los descubrimientos de petr\uf3leo y gas en la regi\uf3n, y (b) el escenario actual y futuro de accesos a los descubrimientos (es decir, con v\uedas de acceso vs. sin v\uedas de acceso). Presentamos un mapa actualizado al 2014 de hidrocarburos de la Amazon\ueda occidental, ilustrando que los bloques petroleros y gas\uedferos cubren 733 414 km2, un \ue1rea mucho m\ue1s grande que el estado norteamericano de Texas, y que se ha ampliado desde la \ufaltima evaluaci\uf3n en 2008. En t\ue9rminos de accesibilidad, documentamos 11 ejemplos del modelo con v\uedas de acceso y seis ejemplos del modelo sin v\uedas de acceso, en toda la regi\uf3n. Por \ufaltimo, hemos documentado 35 descubrimientos confirmados y/o posibles de hidrocarburos por explotar en toda la Amazon\ueda occidental. En el an\ue1lisis, se argumenta que si se deben desarrollar estas reservas, el uso del modelo de \u201coffshore inland\u201d \u2013 m\ue9todo que evita estrat\ue9gicamente la construcci\uf3n de v\uedas de acceso \u2013 es crucial para minimizar los impactos ecol\uf3gicos en una de las regiones m\ue1s importantes de conservaci\uf3n a nivel mundial