Coupling remote sensing and eDNA to monitor environmental impact: A pilot to quantify the environmental benefits of sustainable agriculture in the Brazilian Amazon

Monitoring is essential to ensure that environmental goals are being achieved, including those of sustainable agriculture. Growing interest in environmental monitoring provides an opportunity to improve monitoring practices. Approaches that directly monitor land cover change and biodiversity annually by coupling the wall-to-wall coverage from remote sensing and the site-specific community composition from environmental DNA (eDNA) can provide timely, relevant results for parties interested in the success of sustainable agricultural practices. To ensure that the measured impacts are due to the environmental projects and not exogenous factors, sites where projects have been implemented should be benchmarked against counterfactuals (no project) and control (natural habitat) sites. Results can then be used to calculate diverse sets of indicators customized to monitor different projects. Here, we report on our experience developing and applying one such approach to assess the impact of shaded cocoa projects implemented by the Instituto de Manejo e Certificação Florestal e Agrícola (IMAFLORA) near São Félix do Xingu, in Pará, Brazil. We used the Continuous Degradation Detection (CODED) and LandTrendr algorithms to create a remote sensing-based assessment of forest disturbance and regeneration, estimate carbon sequestration, and changes in essential habitats. We coupled these remote sensing methods with eDNA analyses using arthropod-targeted primers by collecting soil samples from intervention and counterfactual pasture field sites and a control secondary forest. We used a custom set of indicators from the pilot application of a coupled monitoring framework called TerraBio. Our results suggest that, due to IMAFLORA’s shaded cocoa projects, over 400 acres were restored in the intervention area and the community composition of arthropods in shaded cocoa is closer to second-growth forests than that of pastures. In reviewing the coupled approach, we found multiple aspects worked well, and we conclude by presenting multiple lessons learned

El diseño emocional como estrategia para potenciar los recursos ecológicos de la Reserva Natural Laguna Verde del Volcán Galeras

Este proyecto cuenta con un objetivo principal que es el de potenciar el valor turístico de la Reserva Natural Laguna Verde del Volcán Galeras, ubicada en el municipio de Consacá del departamento de Nariño, área que cuenta con grandes atractivos naturales, biodiversidad e historia, pero que aun no es reconocido a nivel departamental como un lugar digno de promoción turística por el desconocimiento de sus cualidades. Con respecto a esta problemática, se realizo una estrategia que integro en su solución al diseño emocional, con la intención de promover en los futuros visitantes de la reserva, valores emocionales y que estos durante su estancia pudieran gozar de una experiencia única y memorable. El resultado fue el desarrollo de un plan turístico de experiencia denominado Ruta Galeras, basado en los valores de marca de la reserva natural, proyecto que cuenta con tres rutas ecológicas, ruta mística, ruta aventura, ciclo ruta que ofrecen diferentes posibilidades según las necesidades de los visitantes brindando así un viaje trasformador entre la naturaleza

Better estimates of soil carbon from geographical data:A revised global approach

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Species richness by field type.

Each dot represents a sample point in shaded cocoa fields (red) or pasture fields (blue).</p

Fig 2 -

Shade grown cocoa agroforestry in the Xingu River basin begins with cultivating shade trees in cocoa agroforestry systems, alongside annual crops and young native trees (left). Over time, the cultivated shade trees are thinned and the native shade trees become dominant (right). Created using components from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Integration and Application Network media library; components copyright Tracey Saxby, Jane Thomas, and Dieter Tracey; under Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International.</p

Biodiversity results by site.

Planned sampling and plots returning usable data after filtering. (DOCX)</p

Accuracy assessment of the regeneration map.

Monitoring is essential to ensure that environmental goals are being achieved, including those of sustainable agriculture. Growing interest in environmental monitoring provides an opportunity to improve monitoring practices. Approaches that directly monitor land cover change and biodiversity annually by coupling the wall-to-wall coverage from remote sensing and the site-specific community composition from environmental DNA (eDNA) can provide timely, relevant results for parties interested in the success of sustainable agricultural practices. To ensure that the measured impacts are due to the environmental projects and not exogenous factors, sites where projects have been implemented should be benchmarked against counterfactuals (no project) and control (natural habitat) sites. Results can then be used to calculate diverse sets of indicators customized to monitor different projects. Here, we report on our experience developing and applying one such approach to assess the impact of shaded cocoa projects implemented by the Instituto de Manejo e Certificação Florestal e Agrícola (IMAFLORA) near São Félix do Xingu, in Pará, Brazil. We used the Continuous Degradation Detection (CODED) and LandTrendr algorithms to create a remote sensing-based assessment of forest disturbance and regeneration, estimate carbon sequestration, and changes in essential habitats. We coupled these remote sensing methods with eDNA analyses using arthropod-targeted primers by collecting soil samples from intervention and counterfactual pasture field sites and a control secondary forest. We used a custom set of indicators from the pilot application of a coupled monitoring framework called TerraBio. Our results suggest that, due to IMAFLORA’s shaded cocoa projects, over 400 acres were restored in the intervention area and the community composition of arthropods in shaded cocoa is closer to second-growth forests than that of pastures. In reviewing the coupled approach, we found multiple aspects worked well, and we conclude by presenting multiple lessons learned.</div

Fig 5 -

(A) regeneration map output 2010–2015 overlayed on Sentinel-2 imagery (ESA). Inset maps (B: B1, B2, B3) are shown with black outline and inset maps (C: C1) are shown with blue outline on the main map. (B1) Inset map of regeneration output 2010–2015 over a particular area to outline regeneration areas vs. RGB images. (B2) Inset RGB median image pre-study period from Landsat 5 (July-August 2011). (B3) Inset RGB image post-study period from Planet NICFI mosaic (July—November 2016). (C1) Example of regeneration areas (in green) within two of the properties.</p

Accuracy assessment of the disturbances map.

Monitoring is essential to ensure that environmental goals are being achieved, including those of sustainable agriculture. Growing interest in environmental monitoring provides an opportunity to improve monitoring practices. Approaches that directly monitor land cover change and biodiversity annually by coupling the wall-to-wall coverage from remote sensing and the site-specific community composition from environmental DNA (eDNA) can provide timely, relevant results for parties interested in the success of sustainable agricultural practices. To ensure that the measured impacts are due to the environmental projects and not exogenous factors, sites where projects have been implemented should be benchmarked against counterfactuals (no project) and control (natural habitat) sites. Results can then be used to calculate diverse sets of indicators customized to monitor different projects. Here, we report on our experience developing and applying one such approach to assess the impact of shaded cocoa projects implemented by the Instituto de Manejo e Certificação Florestal e Agrícola (IMAFLORA) near São Félix do Xingu, in Pará, Brazil. We used the Continuous Degradation Detection (CODED) and LandTrendr algorithms to create a remote sensing-based assessment of forest disturbance and regeneration, estimate carbon sequestration, and changes in essential habitats. We coupled these remote sensing methods with eDNA analyses using arthropod-targeted primers by collecting soil samples from intervention and counterfactual pasture field sites and a control secondary forest. We used a custom set of indicators from the pilot application of a coupled monitoring framework called TerraBio. Our results suggest that, due to IMAFLORA’s shaded cocoa projects, over 400 acres were restored in the intervention area and the community composition of arthropods in shaded cocoa is closer to second-growth forests than that of pastures. In reviewing the coupled approach, we found multiple aspects worked well, and we conclude by presenting multiple lessons learned.</div