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In Argentina, the rapid expansion and intensification of row crop production that has occurred during the last 20 years has resulted in the loss of habitat and spatial heterogeneity in agroecosystems. One of the principal effects of industrialized row crop production is the loss of avian diversity and associated ecosystem services that benefit crop...
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... zones (areas differing in land use, land cover and economic activities) in east-central Argentina. Transect locations were chosen using a geographically-stratified systematic design that consisted in apply- ing a 30 km × 30 km grid over a map of the study area and defining eight strata consisting of agro-production zones and provincial boundaries (Fig. 1). Within each stratum, grid cells were selected systematically (every other cell) with the number of cells propor- tional to the area of each zone. Within each cell the route and the direction for the route to be surveyed were randomly selected among all possible alternatives ( Zaccagnini et al., ...
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... ecosystem services that are important for the function and sustainability of agroecosystems, including regu- lating (seed dispersal, pollination, pest control, carcass and waste disposal) and supporting services (nutrient deposition, ecosystem engineering) (S ̧ ekercio glu, 2006; Whelan et al., 2008). Although most of these services are difficult to quantify, pest control is one of the most important services to agricultural production provided by birds, with several studies showing substantial decreases of pest species and increases in crop production related to the predatory activities of birds (see review in Whelan et al., 2008). Predation by insectivorous birds reduced pest damage levels in coffee plantations by 1–14%, increasing the production value by US$44–$105/ha in 2005/2006 (Kellermann et al., 2008). Moreover, the use of nesting boxes to attract great tits ( Parus major ) reduced caterpillars densities and fruit damage while increasing apple yield by 66% (Mols and Visser, 2002). Research on the con- trolling effects of raptors on rodents and avian agricultural pests is limited (S ̧ ekercio glu et al., 2004); however, the importance of rodents in the diet of raptors suggests that these birds are beneficial species for agriculture (Whelan et al., 2008). For example, higher numbers of diurnal raptors around soybean fields decreased population numbers and growth rate of house mice ( Mus domesticus ) (Kay et al., 1994). Functional richness theory relates the level of ecosystem services provided by birds to the diversity of species providing it. More species represent a larger number of adaptations and henceforth a more efficient use of the resource. As a consequence, species richness is considered to be directly related to the level of service provided (Philpott et al., 2009). Common species (usually the most abundant), however, have the greatest effect on ecosystem processes (Gaston, 2010) and subsequently the level of ecosystem services provided by those species also depends on the abundance of those species (S ̧ ekercio glu et al., 2004; Swift et al., 2004; Wilby et al., 2005). Expansion and intensified management of rows crops are expected to continue to significantly alter habitat quality, quantity, and configuration in Argentina; hence, assessing and determining the implications of these landscape-modifying processes for the provision of ecosystem services, via the effects on avian populations, are imperative to ensure the provision of those services. For this purpose, we used data from a long-term, large-scale monitoring program to analyze the short- and long-term relationship between densities of a suite of avian species (which provide pest control services) and the expansion and intensified management of row crops in the Argentine Pampas and Espinal agroecosystems, assuming a direct relationship between bird abundance and the level of pest control service (Philpott et al., 2009; Swift et al., 2004; Wilby et al., 2005). The study area comprised 128,200 km of the Pampa and Espinal ecoregions (Cabrera, 1994) characterized by annual mean minimum and maximum temperatures of 13 ◦ C and 23 ◦ C, respectively (Soriano, 1992) and 1000 mm of mean annual precipitation (Ferreyra et al., 2001; Messina et al., 1999; Podestá et al., 2002). This area is the principal agricultural production region in Argentina, increasingly dominated by annual row crops (wheat, soybean, sunflower, sorghum and corn) and has been highly modified due to agricultural expansion and intensification (León et al., 1984; Viglizzo et al., 2004). The Espinal portion extends irregularly from the center of province of Santa Fe, northeastern Córdoba and northern Entre Ríos and supports remnant xerophilic woodlands dominated by Prosopis nigra , Acacia caven , and Geoffroea decorticans . These woodland remnants are isolated and immersed in an agricultural matrix. The Pampean portion covers southern Santa Fe, south-central Córdoba and central Entre Ríos provinces, and is dominated by grasslands mainly composed of Stipa sp., Briza sp., Bromus sp., Poa sp. (Cabrera, 1971). We analyzed the relationship between avian species abundance and land use change using two sets of variables: estimates of species density (dependent variables) and environmental factors (independent variables). Using these variables we conducted two analyses representing the short and long-term effects of habitat conversion on species densities. In January each year from 2003 to 2009 (austral breeding season) we surveyed 47 transects (routes), located along unpaved sec- ondary and tertiary roads within different agro-production zones (areas differing in land use, land cover and economic activities) in east-central Argentina. Transect locations were chosen using a geographically-stratified systematic design that consisted in apply- ing a 30 km × 30 km grid over a map of the study area and defining eight strata consisting of agro-production zones and provincial boundaries (Fig. 1). Within each stratum, grid cells were selected systematically (every other cell) with the number of cells proportional to the area of each zone. Within each cell the route and the direction for the route to be surveyed were randomly selected among all possible alternatives (Zaccagnini et al., 2010). Each route had 30 permanently marked points, spaced at 1 km intervals, with the first point on the route randomly placed. At each point six avian species were surveyed between 6:00–11:00 am and 15:00–20:00 pm using distance sampling (Buckland et al., 2001) by a pair of experienced observers. At each point one observer deter- mined the distance to and number of each species detected during a 3-min period whereas the other observer recorded data on land use. Laser rangefinders were used to measure distances to individual birds or to the center of flocks. We selected 6 species based upon their extensive distribution within the study area and relatively high number of detections. Two species were insectivores (Fork-tailed flycatcher Tyrannus savana, White-browed blackbird Sturnella supercilliaris ) and two were raptors (Chimango caracara Milvago chimango and Southern crested-caracara Caracara plancus ), whose diet includes rodents and insects. We also included two species that are considered crop pests (Shiny cowbird Molothrus bonariensis and Eared dove Zenaida auriculata ) to compare their response to land use change with that of species providing pest control services. This comparison can have important management implications if management to enhance pest control by birds also has a positive influence on the abundance of pest species. Species densities were estimated for each year using DISTANCE 5.0, a computer package for the analysis of distance sampling data that corrects for incomplete detection in density estimates (Buckland et al., 2001; Thomas et al., 2002). After exploratory analysis of the data ( sensu Buckland et al., 2001; Thomas et al., 2002, including histograms of the distance data under several grouping factors to detect and correct for the presence of heaping, evasive movement, outliers) we set the truncation distance w at 250 m, the distance that included 90% of detections for all species combined and manually selected 7 distance intervals with cut off points based on the distribution of observations at different distances. Density estimates were derived with detection models using a combination of 3 monotonic, decreasing key functions (uniform, half-normal, and hazard rate) and 2 adjustment terms (cosine and polynomial) and best models chosen using Akaike Information Criteria (AIC) and model weights. To facili- tate multi-species analysis we selected one model (half normal key function + cosine adjustment term) for estimating density of all species based on its better performance for the majority of species. Given a relatively low number of detections for some species during each year we estimated the detection probability function globally (e.g., all years combined) for each species, and estimated density for each year on each route using stratification (by year) and post- stratification (by route) (Buckland et al., 2001). 2.2.2.1. Land use. Land use was recorded annually at each transect point in a 200-m radius circle centered on each point, as estimates of percent cover of five land-use classes (Schrag et al., 2009). Land- use classes included: (1) annual crops (i.e., soybeans, sorghum, sunflower, wheat, corn); (2) managed pastures (both annual and perennial species); (3) non-plowed fields, including (a) agricultural fields that have been resting for more than a season covered with a mixture of herbaceous and grassy vegetation, or (b) natural and semi-natural grasslands used for cattle ranching; (4) forest (both native and exotic species); and (5) other uses (including, but not limited to, aquatic habitats). The percent cover for all points was averaged among the 30 observation points to obtain a single value for each transect per year. 2.2.2.2. Enhanced vegetation index. Enhanced vegetation index (EVI), which provides a consistent and permanent comparison of temporal changes in vegetation is a MODIS (Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) product MOD13Q1 (image acquisition every 16 days) with a 250-m spatial resolution (- land.gsfc.nasa.gov/vi.htm). EVI measures the amount of photosyn- thetic tissue as an index of plant productivity that corrects for distortions in the reflected light caused by airborne particles as well as ground cover below the vegetation (Jiang et al., 2008). For each year, we extracted the EVI value for the pixel containing each sam- ple point and averaged those values to obtain a single value per transect. 2.2.2.3. Precipitation. Precipitation data for each transect were collected from the nearest meteorological station of the Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Since avian abundance may have been associated with precipitation ...
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... About 40% of terrestrial natural ecosystems have been converted to agricultural land (FAO, 2018) in order to meet the demands for commodities from an increased population, leading to a decline in provisioning, cultural and regulatory ecosystem service (Bullock et al., 2011;Landis, 2017). These shifts in land use have been significant drivers of habitat loss, fragmentation, and reduced spatial diversity (Gavier-Pizarro et al., 2012;Klar et al., 2012). ...
Restoration involves the recovery and repair of environments because environmental damage is not always irreversible, and communities are not infinitely resilient to such harm. When restoration projects are applied to nature, either directly or indirectly these may take the form of ecological, forestry or hydrological restoration, for example. In the current scenario of global climate change and increasing intensity of disturbances the importance of restoration in all types of ecosystems in order to adapt to the new conditions (so called prestoration) is evident. Whatever the objective of the restoration initiative, there is a lack of consensus as regards common indicators to evaluate the success or failure of the different initiatives implemented. In this study, we have carried out an extensive meta-analysis review of scientific papers aiming to evaluate the outcomes of restoration projects. We have done a review and selected 95 studies implemented in Europe. We explored the main pre-restoration land cover in which restoration initiatives have been implemented, the main causes of degradation, the objective of the restoration action and the indicators selected to analyze the success or failure of the action. We identified a total of 84 indicators in the analyzed papers and compared with the ones proposed for forest in the recent Nature Restoration Law. The analysis revealed five indicators commonly used for the evaluation of restoration initiatives (abundance, coverage, density, Ellenberg indicator, and richness), even where the initial objective has not yet been achieved. Our findings underscore both the benefits and challenges associated with a specific set of harmonized indicators for evaluating the success or failure of restoration initiatives.
... no change in land use was noticeable. However, the region had an increasing crop cover, climate warming, and increasing precipitations (Baeza and Paruelo, 2020;Ferrelli et al., 2021a, Ferrelli et al., 2021b, presumably causing population increases and distributional range expansions in several bird species (Gavier-Pizarro et al., 2012;Grande et al., 2015;Leveau, 2021;Vazquez et al., 2024). These species, such as doves, raptors, and swallows, can inhabit urban environments (La Sorte et al., 2018). ...
... Increased crop cover and climate warming in the region probably favored other resident bird species abundance regional increment, thus favoring their population increases in Mar del Plata City. For example, Milvago chimango, Patagioenas picazuro, Patagioenas maculosa, Zenaida auriculata, and Myiopsitta monachus have been shown to boost their abundances during the period 2002-2012 in the northern part of the pampean region (Gavier-Pizarro et al., 2012;Goijman et al., 2015). Assuming that these population trends remained in the rest of the pampean region, they could have influenced the bird population dynamics in Mar del Plata City. ...
Urban environments have been characterized by their temporal stability of resources, which could promote stability in bird composition. Several studies have found that bird communities in urban environments persist over the years, showing a similar species composition in the short term. However, studies analyzing continuous changes in urban communities over the long term are scarce. This study aimed to analyze the stability or directional changes (instability) in bird communities along an urban gradient. Bird counts were conducted in urban, suburban, and periurban areas over 8-10 years in 2002-2019. Changes in species composition were analyzed over periods ranging from one year to the next, to changes from one year to the seventeenth. Urban bird communities were more similar between years than suburban and periurban communities. Compositional changes were greater as time lags increased, indicating directional compositional shifts. The magnitude of these changes was similar across the urban gradient. The Chimango Caracara (Milvago chimango), the Picazuro Pigeon (Patagioenas picazuro), the Rufous Hornero (Furnarius rufus), and the Red-bellied Thrush (Turdus rufiventris) significantly increased their abundances during the period, while the House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) significantly decreased its abundance. Regional changes in species abundance, urban vegetation succession, and biotic interactions could explain the changes in bird communities.
... The greater species richness of the Flooding Pampa is due to the higher presence of habitat-specific bird species, which are specialists in grassland habitat. Generalist species, on the other hand, are adapted to a variety of open habitats [55]. The rapid conversion of natural grasslands into agricultural land has a significant impact on grassland birds, whose reproduction is strictly dependent on these environments. ...
The Flooding Pampa grasslands are the last remnant of the Rio de la Plata grasslands in Argentina. Anthropogenic interventions have led to severe degradation and, as a result, the ecosystem services provided by the grasslands are declining, in terms of provisioning, regulating, and supporting services. We synthesized the existing literature on the ecosystem goods and services provided by these grasslands under grazing in different conditions and conservation status. We found that plant and animal diversity and primary production are the most studied ecosystem services, while climate regulation, water supply, nutrient cycling, meat production and erosion control, in that order, are less studied. Cultural services are under-researched. Continuous grazing and glyphosate spraying are the main drivers of grassland degradation. Controlled grazing and conservative stocking rates have been shown to reverse degradation and demonstrate that livestock production is compatible with ecosystem conservation by maintaining regulating and provisioning services. As these management strategies are poorly integrated, improving their implementation will require important changes in farmers’ decisions and the development of policies that create the economic conditions for this to happen. Research is needed to understand the conditions that prevent the knowledge generated from being transferred to producers and translated into practices that would improve the provision of ecosystem services.
... Bird species respond differently to agricultural land use at different scales, depending on their life-history traits such as foraging type or habitat specialization (Gavier-Pizarro et al., 2012;Goijman et al., 2015;Calamari et al., 2018b). Many species depend on both the local and landscape scale, and habitat conditions, even with potentially opposite responses to land cover and management depending on the scale and landscape context (Assandri et al., 2016(Assandri et al., , 2017Barbaro et al., 2017;Macchi et al., 2020;Bosco et al., 2021). ...
Management under ecological schemes and increasing habitat heterogeneity, are essential for enhancing biodiversity in vineyards. Birds provide several contributions to agriculture, for example pest control, recreation and enhancing human mental health, and have intrinsic value. Birds are also ideal model organisms because they are easy to survey, and species respond differently to agricultural land use at different scales. Vegetated borders of crops are key for many species of birds, and distance to the border have been found to be an important factor in vineyard dominated agroecosystems. We evaluate if there are differences in the bird assemblage, between the interior compared to borders within vineyards, using a hierarchical community occupancy model. We hypothesized that occupancy of birds is greater in environments with greater heterogeneity, which in this study was considered to be contributed by the proximity to vegetated corridors. We expected that vineyard borders close to corridors will have higher bird occupancy than the center of the vineyard. The research was conducted in three vineyards with biodiversity-friendly management practices, in Gualtallary, Mendoza. Bird surveys were conducted over three breeding seasons from 2018 to 2020. Occupancy and richness of the bird community was more closely associated with the borders adjacent to the corridors than with the interior of the vineyards, as we initially predicted, although the assemblage of birds did not differ much. More than 75% of the registered species consume exclusively or partially invertebrates. Biodiversity-friendly management and ecological schemes, together with vegetated corridors provide multiple benefits for biodiversity conservation. These approaches not only minimize the use of agrochemicals but also prioritize soil cover with spontaneous vegetation, which supports a diverse community of insectivorous bird species, potentially contributing to pest control.
... We do not believe this to be the case in part because there are few smaller avian scavenging raptors in our study area, and in part because we did not find similar numbers of similarly sized Chimango Caracaras. Chimango Caracaras are abundant generalists (Ferguson-Lees and Christie 2001, Carrete et al. 2009, Gavier-Pizarro et al. 2012) that scavenge regularly, and are often the first to detect and feed on carrion near the roads (Lambertucci et al. 2009). Despite these shared traits with Crested Caracaras, Chimango Caracaras were relatively uncommon in our surveys. ...
... Esto es relevante ya que las especies pueden responder de manera diferente a la forestación de pastizales dependiendo de sus rasgos funcionales, los cuales determinan sus requerimientos de hábitat (Cadotte et al., 2011;. En ese sentido, es esperable que la forestación de ecosistemas de pastizales desplace a las aves especialistas de pastizal (Codesido et al., 2011(Codesido et al., , 2012(Codesido et al., , 2013Fernández et al., 2004;Gavier-Pizarro et al., 2012;Jahn et al., 2017;Wilson et al., 2014); y que favorezca a las especies generalistas y, secundariamente, a las especialistas de bosque (Bellocq et al., 2011;Sarasola & Negro, 2006). Como consecuencia, la conversión de pastizales en cultivos forestales puede desfavorecer la presencia de determinados rasgos funcionales (Ikin et al., 2019;Luck et al., 2013;Vergara & Simonetti, 2004); y al mismo tiempo favorecer la persistencia o la incorporación de otros previamente ausentes . ...
La superficie forestada en Uruguay ha experimentado un rápido crecimiento en las últimas décadas, siendo la industria de la celulosa uno de los principales impulsores. Esto ha llevado a la sustitución de pastizales naturales por cultivos forestales de rápido crecimiento y ciclos cortos, especialmente en la cuenca hidrográfica del Río Negro, región que concentra más del 50% de la superficie forestal del país. Debido a la pérdida y fragmentación de hábitat, la forestación de pastizales puede tener efectos negativos en la biodiversidad asociada a estos ecosistemas.
En el presente estudio se midió la diversidad taxonómica (especies) y funcional (rasgos funcionales) de aves para evaluar los efectos de (1) la sustitución local de pastizales por plantaciones de Eucalyptus sp.; y (2) los cambios en la configuración del paisaje a medida que aumenta la superficie forestada. Durante los años 2015-2020 se relevaron 13 localidades distribuidas en la cuenca hidrográfica del Río Negro, en base muestreos estandarizados (i.e. 734 puntos de conteo de aves, de radio y tiempo fijo). Se utilizaron métricas de diversidad taxonómica y funcional, evaluadas a partir de los componentes gamma (γ), alfa (α) y beta () de la diversidad de aves, en cinco tipos de ambientes: forestación, pastizal, bajo, bosque y sabana; y dos temporadas anuales: estival e invernal.
La forestación presentó valores de diversidad taxonómica y funcional significativamente menores que los ambientes nativos, tanto a nivel de diversidad gamma como alfa. Respecto a los pastizales, a nivel de diversidad gamma la forestación presento reducciones de un 68% y 42% de las especies y grupos funcionales, respectivamente. A nivel de diversidad alfa, los efectos de la forestación fueron aún mayores sobre todo considerando la cantidad de individuos y la biomasa en temporada invernal. En cuanto a la composición (diversidad beta), la forestación favoreció el reemplazo de los ensambles de aves de pastizal por ensambles compuestos principalmente por especies generalistas, estando mayormente representadas las especies omnívoras y escansoriales. Por su parte, a medida que aumentó la superficie forestal a escala de paisaje, la diversidad taxonómica en los pastizales y bajos disminuyó, siendo principalmente afectadas las aves especialistas de ambientes abiertos. Esto da la pauta de que los efectos de la forestación pueden extenderse más allá de la superficie plantada. A su vez, se encontraron efectos opuestos con la diversidad funcional, ya que los grupos funcionales aumentaron levemente en los pastizales con mayor nivel de forestación. Lo anterior sugiere que, a medida que aumenta la superficie forestal en el paisaje, las nuevas condiciones podrían ser aprovechadas por especies de otros grupos funcionales. No obstante, se debe tener en cuenta que la diversidad taxonómica tiende a disminuir. Esta disminución podría llevar a una reducción de la redundancia funcional y, consecuentemente, a una disminución de la estabilidad de los procesos ecosistémicos en los que las aves participan a lo largo del ciclo forestal.
Los resultados de este estudio proporcionan información diagnóstica sobre cómo la expansión forestal, para la industria de la celulosa, está afectando a la diversidad de aves en los sistemas de pastizales aquí evaluados. Teniendo en cuenta las perspectivas a largo plazo de este modelo productivo en Uruguay, es crucial encontrar formas de compatibilizar su desarrollo con la conservación de la biodiversidad asociada a pastizales y los procesos ecosistémicos que de ella derivan.
... In the last two decades, economic and technological factors have driven the widespread adoption of simplified cropping systems based on transgenic soybean in South America (Bert et al., 2011;Piquer-Rodriguez et al., 2018). The encroachment of these over-simplified systems eroded ecosystem services in the region (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005), with recorded reduction of soil carbon stocks (Novelli et al., 2011), increasing water excesses (Caviglia et al., 2013), a negative nutrient balance (Caviglia et al., 2019), biodiversity loss (Gavier-Pizarro et al., 2012), increased air and water pollution (Alonso et al., 2018), weed resistance to herbicides (de la Fuente et al., 2021), and rising water tables and more frequent floods (Kroes et al., 2019;Giménez et al., 2020;Rodriguez et al., 2020). ...
Nitrogen (N) is the primary driver of increased global food supply, but has environmental consequences from both under- and over-fertilisation. While over-fertilisation and reactive nitrogen release onto the environment is widespread in North America and Europe, under-fertilisation and soil mining prevail in South American croplands, calling for novel nitrogen-balancing strategies. The encroachment of soybean-centric, over-simplified cropping systems has eroded ecosystem services in South America. Here we compare the current soybean-centric system in Argentina with seven crop sequences in two long-term experiments started in 2008. Our aim was to identify alternative, more diverse crop sequences to maintain productivity and profitability with a close to neutral apparent N balance of the agroecosystem in two contrasting soils, i.e., a Mollisol and a Vertisol. Crop sequences combined locally adapted crops – soybean, maize and wheat for grain, field pea as cover crop – in a range from monocultures to complex sequences including all four crops. Crop sequence returned a 2.2–3.1-fold variation in productivity (from 4.7 to 10.9 Mg ha⁻¹ in the Mollisol and from 3.4 to 9.9 Mg ha⁻¹ in the Vertisol), 1.5-fold variation in profitability (from 0.92 to 2.14), variation in nitrogen balance from soil mining at − 35 kg N ha⁻¹ year⁻¹ to excess at 17 kg N ha⁻¹ year⁻¹, and a variation in nitrogen use efficiency at crop sequence level (NUEs) from 0.7 to 1.2 in both soil types. High soybean proportion reduced the NUEs and grain productivity of crop sequences. More complex crop sequences, i.e. including three/four crops, showed an N surplus and a similar grain yield than maize monoculture in both soils. The inclusion of maize into crop sequences with high cropping intensity increased both yield and NUEs. We identify new crop sequences that meet three conditions: high productivity and profitability, a close-to-neutral nitrogen balance, and a high nitrogen-use efficiency. These insights allow for alternatives to the current, unsustainable trajectories of simplified soybean-based systems that also avoid the path of over-fertilisation followed by cropping systems elsewhere.
... En 2003, el INTA inició un programa de monitoreo a largo plazo y a gran escala (Bird Monitoring en Argentina; BMA) en las ecorregiones de La Pampa y del Espinal en el centro de Argentina que, según nuestro conocimiento, es el primer censo regional de monitoreo de aves a largo plazo programado en agroecosistemas del sur de América Latina (Zaccagnini, et al 2010;Aspiroz, et al 2012, Gavier-Pizarro, et al 2012. Surgen de este monitoreo datos de detección para 263 especies de aves, durante 10 años. ...
... Within land-use changes, agricultural intensification and the demand of land for agriculture is one of the main drivers of habitat loss and the reduction of spatial heterogeneity (Gavier-Pizarro et al., 2012). This intensification influences ES supply due to mismatches between agricultural uses and regulating and supporting ES (Hasan et al., 2020). ...
Riparian forests nestled in agricultural landscapes represent a small proportion in crop-intensive areas, while contributing remarkably to their biodiversity. This biodiversity supports several ecological processes crucially involved in the supply of ecosystem services (ES) complementary to that provided by agricultural lands and also relevant for designing biodiverse and multifunctional landscapes. Riparian forest is one of the most threatened ecosystems due to land-use intensification and associated water extraction, especially in Mediterranean semi-arid areas, and proper evaluation of the success of riparian restoration projects is usually lacking. Furthermore, there is little empirical evidence of the effects of riparian restoration on ES supply. In this study, we first investigated the effect of hydrological and soil features on survival and growth of saplings planted in degraded riparian areas in two Mediterranean watersheds. Then, we evaluated how riparian restoration affected the supply of ES, comparing nine regulating and supporting ES on these restored areas with other riparian areas spanning a gradient of conservation status, and with other natural and agricultural land-uses in the same watershed.
We found that restoration success mainly depended on water table depth, soil salinity and soil nutrients (namely Mg⁺² and Olsen P). Moreover, we detected an antagonistic interaction between the latter two, and a synergetic interaction between water table depth and soil salinity. Forest patches provided meaningful regulating and supporting ES in agricultural landscapes. In particular, riparian restoration zones increased the supply of regulating and supporting ES (water purification, habitat provision, microclimate regulation and soil C storage) in comparison with degraded natural land-uses and crops. Nevertheless, they were still far from the magnitude and range of ES provided by mature riparian forests. These results highlight the importance of focusing management practices on conserving riparian forest patches and restoring the degraded ones to reconcile agricultural production with the maintenance or enhancement of ES in agricultural Mediterranean landscapes.
... Time series of satellite imagery provide valuable information to monitor and enhance understanding of these processes. Over the Southern Cone, improved land cover estimates would also contribute toward better understanding the ecological and social impacts of forest clearance in the Chaco region [43,44]; small-and large-holder agricultural dynamics in Eastern Paraguay [45]; forest management in Misiones, Argentina [46]; shrub encroachment across Patagonia and in the Andes foothills [47]; and the impacts of grassland-to-cropland conversion across the Pampas and Espinal [48,49]. ...
... In addition to pastureland conversion to croplands along forest frontiers, our study demonstrates that there is cropland expansion at the expense of grasslands (natural, pasturelands, and rangelands) in the Argentine Pampas and the Uruguayan Savanna (Figures 6 and 7). Expansion of croplands across Argentina is especially prevalent in the provinces of Buenos Aires, Córdoba, and Entre Ríos (Figures 6 and 11) and is largely driven by expansion of soybean cultivation [26,48]. Taken together, conversion of natural grasslands, pasturelands, and tree landscapes to croplands represents large-scale agricultural intensification across the subcontinent that started as early as the 1960s [24][25][26]28]. ...
The impact of land cover change across the planet continues to necessitate accurate methods to detect and monitor evolving processes from satellite imagery. In this context, regional and global land cover mapping over time has largely treated time as independent and addressed temporal map consistency as a post-classification endeavor. However, we argue that time can be better modeled as codependent during the model classification stage to produce more consistent land cover estimates over long time periods and gradual change events. To produce temporally-dependent land cover estimates—meaning land cover is predicted over time in connected sequences as opposed to predictions made for a given time period without consideration of past land cover—we use structured learning with conditional random fields (CRFs), coupled with a land cover augmentation method to produce time series training data and bi-weekly Landsat imagery over 20 years (1999–2018) across the Southern Cone region of South America. A CRF accounts for the natural dependencies of land change processes. As a result, it is able to produce land cover estimates over time that better reflect real change and stability by reducing pixel-level annual noise. Using CRF, we produced a twenty-year dataset of land cover over the region, depicting key change processes such as cropland expansion and tree cover loss at the Landsat scale. The augmentation and CRF approach introduced here provides a more temporally consistent land cover product over traditional mapping methods.
