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PARTNERSHIPS FOR ENHANCED ENGAGEMENT IN RESEARCH (PEER)
Cycle 8 (2019 Deadline)


Incorporating relationships between ecosystem integrity and people’s livelihoods for conservation action planning in Tropical Dry Forest

PI: Susana Rodríguez-Buriticá (drodriguez@humboldt.org.co), Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute, in partnership with Universidad Nacional de Colombia
U.S. Partner: Andrew Hansen, Montana State University
Project Dates: January 2020 - August 2022
Twitter account: @inst_humboldt
Facebook: Instituto Humboldt https://es-la.facebook.com/instituto.humboldt/ 

Project Overview:
 
8-221_Dry forest group 
Dry forest group. Photo credit:  Instituto Humboldt 
8-221_tree 
Photo credit: Felipe Villegas 
Despite recent improvements in the availability of basic ecological information on Dry Tropical Forest (DTF) remnants in Colombia, high-impact conservation and sustainable land management strategies are still elusive. This is in part due to the lack of a comprehensive narrative connecting our ecological knowledge with the economic consequences of DTF degradation. This project will address two major knowledge gaps about DTF in Colombia. First, current basic research does not have a good characterization of DTF ecological degradation; specifically, forest degradation in terms of attributes that could be relevant for ecosystem services (ES) provision. Second, despite previous study of the ecological and socioeconomic aspects of DTF, no previous effort has aimed to integrate available information to produce a comprehensive understanding of the role of DTF for local communities, as well as the cost-benefits associated with DTF degradation and loss. Analyses of information have been limited by project-specific commitments and fall short in using sophisticated analytical tools to construct such a narrative. By translating the ecological impacts of DTF degradation on ES and cost-benefit valuations, this PEER team aims to provide powerful tools to negotiate DTF protection and restoration at the local levels.

The goal of the project is to integrate scalable information from contrasting DTF territories with nationwide integrity indicators and to improve models for ES supply dynamics and their economic assessments. Site-specific information for the project will come from two large current DTF projects supported by other sponsors that have explored the links between (1) multi-level biodiversity indicators and DTF degradation in nine watersheds and (2) DTF degradation, ecosystem processes, and ES supply in four watersheds, with only two with socioeconomic information. Both projects are based on forest ecological condition assessments that do not incorporate land management history and only consider forest extent, not forest structure or overall integrity.

PI Dr. Rodríguez and her PEER team will (1) evaluate the congruence between forest degradation, biodiversity, and ecosystem functioning and ES under contrasting socioecological contexts; (2) assess the role of landscape management history on the dynamic of forest and ecosystem degradation; and (3) use ecosystem valuation and cost-benefit analyses to assess relationships among alternative management practices. This PEER-supported project will update analyses and models to improve data integration, scalability, and applicability of results to other DTF contexts by using sub-products from several ongoing U.S. Government-funded projects that will improve landscape and forest degradation assessments, thereby generating stronger evidence-based, high-impact products with nationwide pertinence.

Project results and impact

This project was able to review, curate, analyze and integrate information already available from projects where the Humboldt Institute had participated. These projects span from 2013 to 2022 and provided information on the composition and structure of biological groups at various dry typical forest territories in Colombia.

In addition, the project also compiled information on pressure dynamics and changes in key forest remnants' characteristics over several years. With this information, the project team analyzed the patterns and processes involved in DTF degradation over time and its consequences for forest and ecosystem integrity in DTF territories. They found that DTF had differentially responded to pressure dynamics.  The team identified three forest remnant groups according to their response, defined the characteristics of the pressures they had experienced, and highlighted the importance of considering these differential responses to pressure in restoration and conservation strategic planning. These analyses are summarized in the upcoming book chapter in the sequel of the Dry Tropical Forest book, to be published in 2023. In addition to the specific analyses on degradation dynamics and current forest integrity, the project team also contributed three other chapters that also summarized, re-analyzed, and integrate information from this project. Two chapters explore the status and the potential consequences of further DTF disappearance or degradation. The first of those explores the sensitivity of primate species to the complete disappearance of DTF patches; the second describes and estimates the current risks of invasive species expansion on DTF territories that have not reported invasive species. Finally, one more chapter presents the exploration of soundscapes through acoustic analyses of DTF areas with different levels of landscape degradation. 

In addition to the integration of remote-sense and biodiversity data, the team also integrated socioecological and socioeconomic information to understand the impact of forest management practices at the property level on DTF integrity. They explored this at the municipality level and through Structural Equation Modeling documented a nationwide potential conflict between forest conservation and food security. In municipalities where environmentally friendly practices were prevalent, forest integrity (SCI) was better than in municipalities where these practices were not the norm. On the other hand, in municipalities where properties for self-supply were prevalent, forest integrity conditions worsened. This type of result is pivotal for DTF strategic planning because highlights to authorities and decision-makers the importance of evaluating forest management in an integral way, as well as the need for comprehensive approaches that tackle forest use and the socioeconomic vulnerabilities of local communities.  
 
The final aspect of the project was to explore the connection between ecological processes and the economic value of DTF, as well as the impact of forest degradation on those valuations. For this purpose, the team modeled different scenarios around water provision and water regulation. They took advantage of a recently developed modeling package in Python (InVest), that allowed them to explore in an efficient way different scenarios of forest degradation and restoration as well as to compare different DTF territories.  In terms of both water provision and water regulation, the project's models highlighted the importance of forest amount on catchment’s hydric dynamics, especially during dry years. Although the relevance of forest cover varies from area to area and from region to region, in general, DTF cover improved these ecosystem services. The project's scenario analyses also highlighted the vulnerabilities of ecosystem service supply on DTF territories under scenarios of climate change which imply an increment in extremely dry years. These results are at the core of the third peer-review paper being prepared. The evaluation of the economic impact of these ecosystem service fluctuations across watersheds is underway. 

As a result of this project, the team were able to produce a more comprehensive narrative around DTF degradation.  Previous efforts around DTF at Humboldt had responded to specific project objectives, and although all projects provided useful information and advance our understanding of DTF status, risks, and importance, this project is the first institutional attempt to integrate all those results into linked analyses to tell a more comprehensive story. The project team linked biodiversity data on the ground with remote-sensing products and tested their potential for describing DTF integrity. Finally, the team linked DTF loss and restoration with desirable services around hydric provision, which suggest further loss or steadily increase of  DTF coverage will affect water provision in DTF territories. 

Degradation of DTF is a phenomenon with historic roots in Colombian development; most DTF territories are in the most developed and agricultural productive areas of the country. Nevertheless, this degradation has come with the cost of losing 92% of one of the emblematic ecosystems of Colombia. This project demonstrated that further DTF degradation will have profound impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services, but also, that production practices can be adapted to favor its recovery. 
 
This project contributed to DTF conservation and management by developing four book chapters on the current DTF status and future perspectives. Three peer-review papers are underway as a result of this project, and one more is in the works.


Potential development impacts

Since the beginning of the project the team published a peer-review publication that provides an integrative view of the impact and challenges around dry tropical forest degradation in Colombia. The team have advanced on creating a comprehensive database around biodiversity data from DTF projects in which the Humboldt Institute has participated, a dataset of environmental variables, many derived in collaboration with our US-Partners from the DTF remnants, a comprehensive dataset of socio-economic information to explore DTF management. All these datasets have the potential to be the baseline of further DTF studies, especially regarding DTF transition towards sustainable production and forest management. PEER project  PI notes, that they have designed an analytical workflow to work with the last dataset in the construction of SEM models. This approach could be use in other Humboldt projects or in other areas given that their dataset covers all municipalities of Colombia.  The team consolidated a national analysis on DTF response to anthropogenic pressures that shed light on spatial-temporal processes that should be considered during DTF restoration and management. The project team so far have recommended on this product, to focus on area that has recently change their indirect pressures (road construction) to minimized further degradation of DTF remnants. This product is expected, as the first volume of the same series on Dry Tropical Forest, to be a high impact product for DTF management. In addition, during 2021 year period, the team consolidated three sets of scripts that will improve biodiversity, SE modelling and covariate estimations in any area in Colombia, not only in DTF areas.  During the team's visit to several Regional Environmental Authorities, they detected the need of information regarding regionally specific management recommendation in DTF territories. This project has the potential to deliver such information by combining purely analyses on ecological condition in DTF territories, key areas providing some ecosystem services, and specific aspects to work with local communities regarding their production practices. 

Publications:

Rendón-Hurtado, N. D., Isaza-Narváez, C. V., & Rodríguez-Buriticá, S. (2020). Automatic Identification of Transformation in the Colombian Tropical Dry Forest Using GMM and UBM-GMM. Revista Facultad de Ingeniería, 29(54), e11752. https://doi.org/10.19053/01211129.v29.n54.2020.11752

 
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