Reflexiones en torno a una metodología para la Identificación de Áreas de Importancia para la Conservación de Plantas (AIP) en Colombia

Seis conferencias ilustraron la temática, con aportes internacionales y globales hasta casos puntuales de estudio. Los aportes de los participantes y asistentes se recogen en este documento, como insumo para la consolidación de la propuesta de identificación AIP para el paísBogotáCiencias Básicas de la Biodiversida

Conversatorio sobre frailejones de Colombia: revisión del estado de conservación y amenaza

Colombia tiene a la fecha 88 especies descritas de frailejones, 75 de las cuales son endémicas para el país. Con el conocimiento disponible hace casi dos décadas, Colombia adelantó una primera evaluación del estado de conservación, reportando 36 especies en alguna categoría de amenaza. Desde aquel entonces, han ocurrido importantes avances en el conocimiento del grupo, pero también se han registrado nuevas amenazas, incluyendo la afección por un posible complejo de insectos-hongos, y los posibles impactos del cambio climáticoBogotáCiencias Básicas de la Biodiversida

Metodología para la identificación de áreas de importancia para plantas (AIP) en Colombia

La gestión adecuada de áreas de alta importancia para la biodiversidad es una de las estrategias más exitosas para la conservación in situ de especies de interés. Existen diversas metodología y enfoques para la identificación de estas áreas, de acuerdo al nivel biológico de interés (poblaciones, especies y ecosistemas), y la información disponible, entre otros. En el caso de plantas, las estrategias formuladas para su conservación a nivel nacional e internacional han identificado como una meta, identificar las Áreas de Importancia para Plantas (AIP) y asegurar su preservación. Con miras a avanzar en el cumplimiento de esta meta, se presenta una propuesta metodológica para la identificación de AIP en Colombia, la cual se desarrolló a partir de la consulta de literatura que documente las experiencias existentes en este tema a nivel internacional, y la disponibilidad de información. Adicionalmente, se presenta un análisis sobre cómo esta iniciativa se articula con otros ejercicios de priorización a nivel nacional.Appropriate management of areas of high importance for biodiversity is one of the most successful strategies for in situ conservation of species of interest. The methodologies and approaches to identify these areas are diverse, depending of the biological level (population, species, ecosystems), and the available information, among others. In the case of plants, strategies formulated for their conservation at the national and international level have recognized as a goal to identify Important Areas for Plants (IPA) and secure their preservation. With the aim of contributing to the achievement of this goal, this document presents a methodological proposal for the identification of IPAs in Colombia, which was developed by reviewing the literature documenting existing experiences globally, and the information available. In addition, we present an analysis of how this initiative can be articulated to other prioritization exercises in the country.Bogotá D.C.Ciencias Básicas de la Biodiversida

Evaluación del conocimiento en higiene oral de las madres, en relación al desarrollo de caries dental según criterio ICDAS en sus hijos de uno a cinco años.

La desidia que presentan las madres sobre los conocimientos de higiene oral, junto con el desconocimiento del profesional de los nuevos métodos diagnósticos de caries dental. En base a esto se ha planteado reeducar a las madres sobre la necesidad que tienen sus en presentar una buena educación en salud oral. Este planteamiento se estipularon unas medidas diagnosticas mediante el registro ICDAS de cada uno de estos niños y así tener una base real de la prevalencia de esta enfermedad, esto se implemento a 81 madres y/o acudientes de los niños evaluados en las casas hogar del ICBF con edades de 1 a 5 años de edad, evaluando los conocimientos que posean los responsables de los niños en el cuidado de la higiene oral y buscando correlacionar los conocimientos con el estado dental de los niños. De acuerdo al analisis de niños afectados estos presentan una tendencia de mala higiene oral recuerente al paso de los años, que nos demuestran como progresivamente estas caries se van volviendo mas extensas y terminan siendo un factor para la perdida de organos dentales a temprana edad, prueba de ello es la reduccion de niños sanos, que van desde 1 año con el 100% sanos, pasando por edades que comprenden de los 2 a los 3 años con una porporcion de 46,2% y 33,3% de niños sanos respectivamente. Hay correlacion entre los conocimientos que poseen las madres sobre higiene oral, respecto al indice de caries de sus hijos, son tan afines estos que cuando la madre desconoce sobre los tiempos de erupcion de los organos dentales del niño, estos podrian vese afectados por la caries dental respecto a su orden de erupcion y su localizacion con mayor facilidad

Chlorophyll a fluorescence and leaf temperature are early indicators of oil palm diseases

Bud rot (BR) caused by Phytophthora palmivora and lethal wilt (LW) whose causal agent is unknown, are two diseases currently posing a threat to the oil palm (Elaeis guineensis. Jacq) industry. BR, first reported in 1964, has destroyed more than 85,000 ha. LW, first reported in 1994 in the Llanos Orientales in Colombia, has destroyed more than 5,000 ha. Chlorophyll a fluorescence is useful as a provider of information about the efficiency of the photosynthetic process when plants are subjected to biotic or abiotic stresses. Oil palms affected by BR and LW showed anomalies in the photosynthetic system, manifested by reductions in Fv/FM and ΦPSII. Changes in ΦPSII, variable fluorescence yield (Fv) and maximum fluorescence in light-adapted leaves (FM’) were observed from the start of BR infection. The most sensitive and early indicators of LW disease were leaf temperature and basal fluorescence (F0). Fv/F0 significantly changed in diseased palms, indicating problems with movement of electrons through the electron transport chain. Leaf temperature changed in response to both diseases, but variation was greater in LW. We concluded that damage to the photochemical system caused by the diseases affected the processes by which the plant captures and transports energy, causing a physiological imbalance in the plant reflected in the observed variations in chlorophyll a fluorescence and leaf temperature. The two parameters began to change early in the onset of BR and before visual symptoms appeared in LW, which is very important to the management of both diseases, the foundation of which is early detection

Identifying and mapping individual plants in a highly diverse high-elevation ecosystem using UAV imagery and deep learning

The identification and counting of plant individuals is essential for environmental monitoring. UAV based imagery offer ultra-fine spatial resolution and flexibility in data acquisition, and so provide a great opportunity to enhance current plant and in-situ field surveying. However, accurate mapping of individual plants from UAV imagery remains challenging, given the great variation in the sizes and geometries of individual plants and in their distribution. This is true even for deep learning based semantic segmentation and classification methods. In this research, a novel Scale Sequence Residual U-Net (SS Res U-Net) deep learning method was proposed, which integrates a set of Residual U-Nets with a sequence of input scales that can be derived automatically. The SS Res U-Net classifies individual plants by continuously increasing the patch scale, with features learned at small scales passing gradually to larger scales, thus, achieving multi-scale information fusion while retaining fine spatial details of interest. The SS Res U-Net was tested to identify and map frailejones (all plant species of the subtribe Espeletiinae), the dominant plants in one of the world’s most biodiverse high-elevation ecosystems (i.e. the páramos) from UAV imagery. Results demonstrate that the SS Res U-Net has the ability to self-adapt to variation in objects, and consistently achieved the highest classification accuracy (91.67% on average) compared with four state-of-the-art benchmark approaches. In addition, SS Res U-Net produced the best performances in terms of both robustness to training sample size reduction and computational efficiency compared with the benchmarks. Thus, SS Res U-Net shows great promise for solving remotely sensed semantic segmentation and classification tasks, and more general machine intelligence. The prospective implementation of this method to identify and map frailejones in the páramos will benefit immensely the monitoring of their populations for conservation assessments and management, among many other applications

Ecosystem services show variable responses to future climate conditions in the Colombian páramos

Background: The páramos, the high-elevation ecosystems of the northern Andes, are well-known for their high species richness and provide a variety of ecosystem services to local subsistence-based communities and regional urbanizations. Climate change is expected to negatively affect the provision of these services, but the level of this impact is still unclear. Here we assess future climate change impact on the ecosystem services provided by the critically important páramos of the department of Boyacá in Colombia, of which over 25% of its territory is páramo. Methods: We first performed an extensive literature review to identify useful species of Boyacá, and selected 103 key plant species that, based on their uses, support the provision of ecosystem services in the páramos. We collated occurrence information for each key species and using a Mahalanobis distance approach we applied climate niche modelling for current and future conditions. Results: We show an overall tendency of reduction in area for all ecosystem services under future climate conditions (mostly a loss of 10% but reaching up to a loss of 40%), but we observe also increases, and responses differ in intensity loss. Services such as Food for animals, Material and Medicinal, show a high range of changes that includes both positive and negative outcomes, while for Food for humans the responses are mostly substantially negative. Responses are less extreme than those projected for individual species but are often complex because a given ecosystem service is provided by several species. As the level of functional or ecological redundancy between species is not yet known, there is an urgency to expand our knowledge on páramos ecosystem services for more species. Our results are crucial for decision-makers, social and conservation organizations to support sustainable strategies to monitor and mitigate the potential consequences of climate change for human livelihoods in mountainous settings.publishedVersio

CO2 soil emission under different methods of oil palm replanting

Colombian oil palm plantations have started a largescalereplanting phase. The replanting process has an effect onthe disposal of biomass, plant health management, and agroecological conditions due to the disturbance that is generated.This document addresses soil respiration (CO2 flux) as a responsevariable of crop replanting. Seven renovation methods used inColombia were tested. The measurements were taken over timeafter the disturbance and planting of the new crop. This study wascarried out in the municipality of Tumaco between August of 2009 and June of 2011 using 7 methods of renovation and 4 stages of crop development. The CO2 flow was measured at 12 points in each plot. There were no significant differences for the CO2 emission among the replanting methods. The average value for respiration was 929 mg CO2 m-2 h-1 (± 270.3); however, significant differences were found over time.This response was not related to fluctuations of soil temperatureand moisture; therefore, there should be an associated responseto biotic factors (microbial organisms) not established in thisstudy. The values suggested that the soil of the plots under areplanting process emitted considerable quantities of carbon intothe atmosphere, but the emissions declined over time and, in turn,were offset by the photosynthesis of the new crop (14 μ CO2 m-2s-1 ± 1.4, data not shown), creating an overall positive carbon balance

Plant Power:Opportunities and challenges for meeting sustainable energy needs from the plant and fungal kingdoms

Societal Impact Statement Bioenergy is a major component of the global transition to renewable energy technologies. The plant and fungal kingdoms offer great potential but remain mostly untapped. Their increased use could contribute to the renewable energy transition and addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7 “Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.” Current research focuses on species cultivated at scale in temperate regions, overlooking the wealth of potential new sources of small‐scale energy where they are most urgently needed. A shift towards diversified, accessible bioenergy technologies will help to mitigate and adapt to the threats of climate change, decrease energy poverty, improve human health by reducing indoor pollution, increase energy resilience of communities, and decrease greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels. Summary Bioenergy derived from plants and fungi is a major component of the global transition to renewable energy technologies. There is rich untapped diversity in the plant and fungal kingdoms that offers potential to contribute to the shift away from fossil fuels and to address the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7) “Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.” Energy poverty—the lack of access to modern energy services—is most acute in the Global South where biodiversity is greatest and least investigated. Our systematic review of the literature over the last 5 years (2015–2020) indicates that research efforts have targeted a very small number of plant species cultivated at scale, mostly in temperate regions. The wealth of potential new sources of bioenergy in biodiverse regions, where the implementation of SDG7 is most urgently needed, has been largely overlooked. We recommend next steps for bioenergy stakeholders—research, industry, and government—to seize opportunities for innovation to alleviate energy poverty while protecting biodiversity. Small‐scale energy production using native plant species in bioenergy landscapes overcomes many pitfalls associated with bioenergy crop monocultures, such as biodiversity loss and conflict with food production. Targeted trait‐based screening of plant species and biological screening of fungi are required to characterize the potential of this resource. The benefits of diversified, accessible bioenergy go beyond the immediate urgency of energy poverty as more diverse agricultural landscapes are more resilient, store more carbon, and could also reduce the drivers of the climate and environmental emergencies