María Vallejos

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin | HU Berlin · Biogeography and Conservation Biology Laboratory

Sustainability science recognizes the importance of the integrated assessment of the ecological and social systems in land-use planning. However, most studies so far have been conceptual rather than empirical. We developed a framework to characterize the social-ecological systems heterogeneity according to its functioning through the identification...

Deforestation control is one of the major challenges worldwide. The aim of this study was to analyse deforestation under the Forest Law in the Argentine Dry Chaco ecoregion a decade after its enactment and to assess compliance with forest protection standards in this region. For this purpose, we overlapped the provincial land zoning maps with an an...

Conservation policies often promote land privatization to reduce incentives for deforestation. However, empirical evidence on the relationship between landtenure form and forest conservation outcomes is inconclusive.We combined key informant mapping and geospatial analyses to test the association between the area under tenure and the area deforeste...

The Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) was established to promote and provide guidance toward a global observation network on biodiversity and ecosystems for decision makers and the scientific community. Here we comment on three key challenges in the development and implementation of monitoring schemes and indica...

Se lanzó la Colección 1 de Mapas Anuales d de Uso y Cobertura del Suelo del Bioma Pampa Sudamericano (2000-2019). La colección proporciona los datos anuales de la dinámica en los cambios en el uso y cobertura del suelo de 20 años, con 30 metros de resolución. Esta iniciativa representa un importante paso para garantizar el mapeo de la cobertura y u...

The Río de la Plata Grasslands (RPG) region is the largest area of the temperate humid and sub-humid grasslands biome in South America and one of the largest in the world. The region is located on fertile soils, generally very suitable for agricultural development, so it is undergoing an intense land cover change process. Our knowledge of these cha...

The spatial mapping of social-ecological system (SES) archetypes constitutes a fundamental tool to operationalize the SES concept in empirical research. Approaches to detect, map, and characterize SES archetypes have evolved over the last decade towards more integrative and comparable perspectives guided by SES conceptual frameworks and reference l...

La búsqueda de un compromiso entre la producción de alimento, la conservación de los ecosistemas y la disponibilidad de agua adecuada para potabilización es de una importancia relevante. A partir de resultados obtenidos en nuestro país, este artículo analiza la problemática y pone en relieve la necesidad de diseñar sistemas de producción cuyas prác...

Un grupo de 50 expertos de 23 países fue convocado por el programa bioDISCOVERY de Future Earth y la Red de Observación de la Biodiversidad (GEO BON) para proporcionar una síntesis actualizada de las evidencias disponibles y realizar una serie de recomendaciones para alcanzar los objetivos mundiales de biodiversidad. El documento, con participación...

Human impacts on the Earth’s biosphere are driving the global biodiversity crisis. Governments are preparing to agree on a set of actions intended to halt the loss of biodiversity and put it on a path to recovery by 2050. We provide evidence that the proposed actions can bend the curve for biodiversity, but only if these actions are implemented urg...

EXPERT INPUT TO THE POST-2020 GLOBAL BIODIVERSITY FRAMEWORK: TRANSFORMATIVE ACTIONS ON ALL DRIVERS OF BIODIVERSITY LOSS ARE URGENTLY REQUIRED TO ACHIEVE THE GLOBAL GOALS BY 2050

Humans place strong pressure on land and have modified around 75% of Earth’s terrestrial surface. In this context, ecoregions and biomes, merely defined on the basis of their biophysical features, are incomplete characterizations of the territory. Land system science requires classification schemes that incorporate both social and biophysical dimen...

Agricultural expansion is altering the provision of ecosystem services and seriously affecting the well-being of the indigenous communities still living in forests. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of forest loss and degradation on the indigenous forest dependent communities of Eastern Salta, Argentina, between 2001 and 2015. First, we identif...

Biodiversity and natural resources constitute a social safety net for forest-dependent communities and represent their main source of livelihood. Agricultural expansion driven by global food demand is not only deeply altering landscapes at the local level but also affect the forms of life and culture of rural life. These changes are increasing ineq...

The social-ecological system (SES) approach is fundamental for addressing global change challenges and to developing sustainability science. Over the last two decades, much progress has been made in translating this approach from theory to practice, although the knowledge generated is still sparse and difficult to compare. To better understand how...

The relationships among social capital (SC) and collective actions (CA) for nature conservation and management were analyzed across five case studies characterised by specific land-use dynamics in the South American continent. Data on SC and CA were obtained through a semi-structured questionnaire to groups of selected social actors. Multivariate s...

Las cianobacterias son un grupo muy particular de organismos procariotas que poseen clorofila-a y llevan a cabo la fotosíntesis. Poseen además ficobilinas, un pigmento accesorio que solo se encuentran en las cianobacterias y les da el color típico verde azulado. Algunas especies son capaces de fijar el nitrógeno al agua gracias a células diferenci...

En las últimas décadas el aumento de nutrientes provenientes de la escorrentía, junto al aumento de temperatura a nivel mundial, han favorecido la formación de floraciones de cianobacterias en los ambientes acuáticos. En el marco de un proyecto interinstitucional, INIA se plantea abordar el tema de las floraciones y la sostenibilidad de los sistema...

Los cambios en el uso del suelo han intensificado los conflictos socioambientales en el este de la provincia de Salta. El mapeo de actores resulta útil para identificar a los actores relevantes, entender cómo se relacionan y cuáles son los intereses y grado de poder en torno al uso de los recursos naturales y la transformación del territorio. Para...

The Ecosystem Services concept continues to evolve from its beginnings. The concept now includes multiple conceptualizations of values, and the incorporation of multiple trade-offs and scales into decisions concerning nature conservation and sustainable development. Despite this progress, there are still many challenges ahead, requiring a broad int...

Latin America exhibits one of the highest rates of biodiversity and ecosystem services (ES) loss worldwide along with a remarkable asymmetry in the access to ES benefits (ecosystem services inequality, ESI hereafter). The objective of this manuscript is to propose and validate a conceptual model to understand the links between ESI and ecosystem ser...

Decision makers are increasingly interested in information from ecosystem services (ES) assessments. Scientists have for long recognised the importance of selecting appropriate indicators. Yet, while the amount and variety of indicators developed by scientists seems to increase continuously, the extent to which the indicators truly inform decision...

The expansion of the agricultural frontier intensifies the occurrence of socio-environmental conflicts in the South American Chaco ecoregion. The deepening of the agro-export model by extra-regional actors in recent years is causing the direct expulsion of numerous rural families and affecting their forms of life and culture. Land use changes over...

In a complex environmental, productive and socioeconomic scenario, on November 28th, 2007, the National Act N°26.331 of “Minimum Standards for the Environmental Protection of Native Forests” (known as the “Forest Law”) was sanctioned in Argentina with the purpose of protecting native forests at the national scale. In this article, we aim to critica...

En un complejo escenario ambiental, productivo y socioeconómico, el 28 de noviembre de 2007 fue sancionada en Argentina la Ley Nacional Nº 26.331 de “Presupuestos Mínimos de Protección Ambiental de los Bosques Nativos" (conocida como "Ley de bosques") con el propósito de proteger los bosques nativos a escala nacional. En este artículo nos proponemo...

Land use zoning has been proposed as an instrument to steer sustainable land use and reduce deforestation. Its effectiveness is a growing concern among researchers and decision makers. Nowadays, the dry forests of the Argentine Chaco are a global hotspot of deforestation, where a zoning policy has been established through the enactment of a Nationa...

La implementación del modelo productivo pampeano en la región chaqueña genera perdida de hábitats, disminución de la conectividad de los parches remanentes y pérdida de biodiversidad. Una posibilidad es trabajar con sistemas de intensidad productiva intermedia en combinación con la protección de fragmentos de bosque.

V Congreso Internacional de Servicios Ecosistémicos de los Neotrópicos

Roads have important effects on wildlife, such as natural habitat fragmentation and degradation and direct killing of fauna, which leads to reductions in wildlife population size. We focused on a principal road in Northwest Argentina to test for the effect of seasonality and landscape features on the composition of road-killed wildlife. We conducte...

Challenges that humanity face in the Anthropocene require new conceptual frameworks to better understand the linkages and feedbacks between society and nature. The ecosystem services framework constitutes a powerful approach for understanding human dependence on both natural and societal capital. Currently, new operational frameworks are needed for...

En este capítulo se plantea la importancia de abordar el estudio de los Sistemas Socio-Ecológicos para la planificación territorial, realizando un análisis integrado de los sistemas biofísicos y humanos. Mediante este enfoque, la gestión de los recursos naturales no se centra solo en los componentes del sistema, sino en sus relaciones, interaccione...

Resumen Debido a limitaciones para abordar la complejidad de la relación sociedad-naturaleza, los esfuerzos para solucionar los proble-mas ambientales han sido en general infructuosos. Aquí propo-nemos que el enfoque holístico de " socio-ecosistema " por parte de la academia, podría contribuir a disminuir estas limitaciones desde la adopción de cua...

Offering a balanced review of differing approaches based on remote sensing methods to monitor ecosystem services related to biodiversity conservation, carbon and water cycles, and the energy balance of the terrestrial ecosystem, this book identifies the relevant issues and challenges of assessment, presents cutting-edge sensing techniques, uses glo...

Resumen Los cambios en el uso de la tierra generan uno de los mayores impactos antrópicos sobre el ambiente. En particular, el avance de la frontera agropecuaria causa alteraciones importantes sobre el ciclo del agua y la disponibilidad de los recursos hídricos para la sociedad, además de los impactos sobre la biodiversidad, la degradación de tierr...

Conceptual and Methodological Elements for Cumulative Environmental Effects Assessment (CEEA) in Subtropical Forests. The Case of Eastern Salta, Argentina: Northern Argentina experienced an unprecedented deforestation rate of xerophitic forests as a consequence of agricultural expansion. In the Province of Salta, 26% of the forest were removed betw...

Northern Argentina experienced an unprecedented deforestation rate of xerophitic forests as a consequence of agricultural expansion. In the Province of Salta, 26% of the forest were removed between 1977 and 2008. At the end of 2007, just before the No. 26331 Law of Native Forest Protection was voted by the Congress, the highest annual rate of defor...