PELD-PECJ2020: the impacts of global change on biodiversity conservation management and ecosystem services - a socioecological approach

Abstract

The project PELD-PECJ aims to quantify the impacts of global change in and around Campos do Jordão State Park. The data from research and monitoring will provide information to the authorities of the Park and other conservation units in São Paulo to harmonize conservation management and the use of ecosystem services. Changes in land use and land cover and disturbances by fires detected from satellite images will be used to estimate the dynamics of carbon stocks and sequestration. Landscape diversity, hydrology, soils and land cover will be related to biogeochemical cycles in native forest, Pinus plantation and open vegetation. Modeling and experimental studies will provide information on the potential impacts of atmospheric N deposition and climate change on ecosystem structure and function, and on the provision of ecosystem services. The impacts of tourism and change in land cover (e.g., restoration of Pinus plantations with native vegetation) will be considered to optimize the benefits of multiple ecosystem services. The results of these pieces of research will be used to create decision-aid tools for park managers and decision makers in neighbouring municipalities. This LTER site will serve as a model for a network of mountain LTER sites in South America. The surveys are organized into four Work Packages (WP1-4). N1 - Vegetation dynamics focuses on obtaining data for parameterization and validation of the spatially explicit 2D-aDGVM model, to study forest-open vegetation mosaics. This WP integrates empirical and modeling work: (1) the history of fires to verify the importance of fire and land use on landscape structure (forest mosaic-open vegetation); (2) ecoclimatic modeling will provide ancillary information on climatic and hydrological limitations (historical, current and future forecasts) for the growth and potential distribution of trees; (3) the experimental and ecophysiological characterization of functional traits of native and exotic /invasive tree species will contribute data to improve the parameterization of the aDVGM model (and d and two other models of WP2 - 'Biogeochemistry); (4) ecohydrological investigations will contribute data to the parameterization of the aDVGM model on water availability and root penetration depth.WP2 - Biogeochemistry is organized into three subprojects, above two models: JULES and Biome-BGCMuSo. This core will integrate the various components of the C and N cycles into three distinct subprojects: (1) data collection of energy and CO2 and H2O fluxes; (2) Biometrics, litter production and gas fluxes between soil and atmosphere; (3) Atmospheric deposition of N, movement of N along the soil profile and its output via watercourses.WP3 - Ecosystem services - modeling of the socioecological system The knowledge generated by WP1-2 will be used as initial information to quantify ecosystem services and evaluate whether the desired conservation objective and other use of ecosystem services is being achieved. An inter-and transdisciplinary 'multi-stakeholder' team will identify all stakeholders involved, the resources and their dynamics, and the interactions between stakeholders, their use of resources and the impacts of use on the operation of the system to propose, through participatory management, models and implementations of conservation management and ecosystem services, investigated in five subprojects: (1) General diagnosis of ecosystem services; (2) Habitat quality and habitat risk (felids); (3) Biodiversity conservation and loss of ecosystem services during the restoration process of Pinus plantations - how to minimize risks; (4) Harmonization of tourism management with the prioritization of biodiversity conservation; (5) Fire management.WP4 - Biodiversityand trophic structure includes self-funded research. (AU)