Nestor Ignacio Gasparri

National University of Tucuman | UNT · Instituto de Ecología Regional (IER)

Forest loss in the tropics affects large areas, but whereas full forest conversions are routinely assessed, forest degradation patters remain often unclear. This is particularly so for the world’s tropical dry forests, where remote sensing of forest disturbances is challenging due to high canopy complexity, strong phenology and climate variability,...

Significance Millions of people globally rely on forest-based resources for their livelihoods, particularly in the tropics and subtropics. Deforestation is often hypothesized to diminish forest-dependent communities’ resource base and to push them toward more-marginal environments, but such ecological marginalization has rarely been quantified. We...

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...

Cattle ranching has increased globally in the last decades, and although pasture expansion is well documented across different regions, there is little understanding of the intensity at which cattle operate in these areas. With freely available Sentinel-2 satellite imagery, we mapped for the first time polyethylene silage bags used for forage conse...

Agricultural expansion into tropical and subtropical forests often leads to major social-ecological trade-offs. Yet, despite ever-more detailed information on where deforestation occurs, how agriculture expands into forests remains unclear, which is hampered by a lackof spatially and temporally detailed reconstruction of agricultural expansion. Her...

Tropical dry forests are widespread, harbour vast amounts of carbon and unique biodiversity, and underpin the livelihoods of millions. A variety of natural and anthropogenic disturbances affect tropical dry forest canopy, yet our understanding of how these disturbances impact on forest structure and ecosystem functioning, and how forests develop af...

Los bosques nativos son los ecosistemas naturales que más atención reciben de la sociedad en relación con su conservación y manejo. El alcance de la definición de bosque nativo ha cambiado con el tiempo, lo cual afecta la implementación de diversos instrumentos que usan las instituciones (e.g., cuando se identifican las coberturas de bosques alcanz...

Forest degradation is a gradual process through which the forest’s biomass declines, the species composition and vertical complexity change and the soil physicochemical properties degrade. Evaluating forest degradation is challenging, as it needs measurable indicators in order to compare different states of degraded forest with forests in optimal c...

R������. Las parcelas forestales permanentes son áreas de muestreo donde se registran periódicamente la identidad, abundancia y tamaño de los árboles, para estudiar cómo cambian los bosques en relación con el clima, los disturbios naturales y los usos y manejos. Hasta hoy, los patrones de cambio observados con parcelas permanentes en la Argentina t...

Land cover divergences across international borders reflect how country-level policies influence ecological footprints on the landscape. We identified 30 abrupt transboundary divergences across the globe, with major land cover differences despite similar ecological conditions. Divergences were significantly associated with differences in Gross Dome...

Forest degradation in the tropics is a widespread, yet poorly understood phenomenon. This is particularly true for tropical and subtropical dry forests, where a variety of disturbances, both natural and anthropogenic, affect forest canopies. Addressing forest degradation thus requires a spatially-explicit understanding of the causes of disturbances...

Stem capacitance and water storage are known to play an important role in the water economy of trees by acting as an intermediate water source for transpiring leaves. The bark, in addition to be involved in protection and mechanical support of the trees, can also serve as a water reservoir. We examined the relationship between inner bark and sapwoo...

"En esta serie técnica se recopilan los aportes de diferentes grupos de gestores e investigadores en el marco del proyecto REDD+, con la finalidad de analizar las oportunidades y desafíos que presentaría integrar el bosque nativo y sus especies a la producción ganadera. También es interés de este trabajo, profundizar en la re-valorización del bosqu...

Tropical dry forests harbor major carbon stocks but are disappearing rapidly across the globe as agriculture expands into them. Unfortunately, carbon emissions from deforestation in dry forests remain poorly understood as high spatial-temporal and vertical heterogeneity complicate biomass mapping. Here, we use a novel Gradient Boosted Regression fr...

The Dry Chaco is a semi-arid ecoregion in South America that hosts one of the largest dry forests in the world, but expansion of dryland agriculture and cattle ranching led to gradual conversion of native vegetation to anthropogenic land cover. The potential impact of these newly established agricultural lands on the surrounding environment is of g...

Agricultural expansion into tropical and subtropical forests often leads to major social-ecological trade-offs. Yet, despite ever-more detailed information on where deforestation occurs, how agriculture expands into forests remains unclear. Here, we developed and mapped a novel set of metrics that quantify agricultural frontier processes at unprece...

To meet the global-human population increase, deforestation resulting from agriculture expansion threatens the ecological and social dimensions of subtropical and tropical forests. Here, we identified classes of agricultural frontiers in the Dry Chaco ecoregion based on land-use changes between 2000 and 2013, in which we performed interviews and qu...

The different ways in which biodiversity is distributed on Earth have always intrigued ecologists, promoting constant research to elucidate the causes and mechanisms that guide their spatial patterns. Numerous hypotheses have been proposed to explain biodiversity across the world. In South American Subtropical Dry forests, a global deforestation ho...

En esta presentación se sugieren una serie de relaciones de la ganadería con el almacenaje y flujo de carbono de los bosques nativos en Uruguay. Las mismas se hacen de manera cualitativa y es resultado de la experiencia adquirida por un numeroso grupo de trabajo constituido en el marco del proyecto REDD+ de Uruguay y el convenio realizado con el IN...

The quantification of carbon storage in vegetation biomass is a crucial factor in the estimation and mitigation of CO2 emissions. Globally, arid and semi-arid regions are considered an important carbon sink. However, they have received limited attention and, therefore, it should be a priority to develop tools to quantify biomass at the local and re...

Forests structure of palo santo (Gonopterodendron sarmientoi): Regional assessment for forest management and conservation in Argentine. Gonopterodendron sarmientoi is a threatened native tree of the Dry Chaco region in South America, adapted to semiarid conditions. However, the relationships among climatic and edaphic conditions and its forest stru...

The landscape configuration of socio-ecological land systems results from the interaction between the environmental conditions (relatively homogeneous within ecoregions) and country-level management and land-use decisions. However, social, land-use and sustainability research disciplines often study each independently. We used Euclidean distance an...

Anthropogenic activity leading to forest structural and functional changes needs specific ecological indicators and monitoring techniques. Since decades, forest structure, composition, biomass, and functioning have been studied with ground-based forest inventories. Nowadays, satellites survey the earth, producing imagery at different spatial and te...

Los bosques de ribera se encuentran entre los ecosistemas más vulnerables, y para mantener los servicios que brindan se necesita su restauración ecológica. El objetivo principal de nuestro trabajo fue generar un mapa de zonas ribereñas a fin de identificar bosques, áreas transformadas y oportunidades para restaurar estos ecosistemas en Tucumán, Arg...

Subtropical dry forests are among the largest and most threatened terrestrial biomes worldwide. In Argentina, the Native Forest Law (NFL) was passed in 2007 to regulate deforestation by mandating the provincial zonation of forested areas, while the erection of fences has been an increasingly common mechanism of private-land control reinforcement in...

In dry woodland regions, silvopastures have emerged as a promising option to balance cattle production, carbon storage and biodiversity. However, one of the major challenges in these systems, particularly when implemented in a matrix of natural vegetation, is the preservation of tree populations in the face of management actions implemented by ranc...

Por su continuidad espacial y su relativa homogeneidad ecológica y biofísica, las ecorregiones son un nivel de organización apropiado para discutir y planificar iniciativas de conservación del ambiente a escala regional y nacional. Las interacciones complejas entre las características ecológicas de las ecorregiones, los cambios socioeconómicos loca...

Tabla A2. Puntaje de cada presión (de 0 a 100, con valores más altos reflejando una mayor incidencia de la misma) en las ecorregiones terrestres de Argentina en base a su jerarquización sobre cuatro dimensiones.

Los bosques nativos tienen una gran relevancia económica, ecológica y social para el país. El proyecto REDD+ en Uruguay contribuye a la búsqueda de oportunidades para mejorar la gestión de los bosques nativos y su integración con actividades productivas.

Disparity between the knowledge produced and knowledge required to address complex environmental challenges, such as biodiversity conservation and climate adaptation, continues to grow. Systems thinking under the Open Standards for Conservation framework can help close this gap by facilitating interdisciplinary engagement, advancing conversations o...

Impacts of cattle production vary among different production systems, but data on their distribution is scarce for most world regions. In this work, we combine datasets on cattle vaccination locations and land cover in a regression framework to define and map major cattle production systems in the Argentinean Dry Chaco. We also explore how cattle o...

The Dry Chaco is mostly known as a forested ecosystem. However it includes natural grasslands, savannas, scrublands, and wetlands. With one of the highest global deforestation rates in the last two decades and only 12% of the area protected, the concern about land-use change in this ecoregion has raised exponentially; but conservation initiatives d...

Tropical dry forests and savannas harbour unique biodiversity and provide critical ES, yet they are under severe pressure globally. We need to improve our understanding of how and when this pressure provokes tipping points in biodiversity and the associated social-ecological systems. We propose an approach to investigate how drivers leading to natu...

The increasing global interconnectivity influencing land system change brings with it new challenges for land-system science. We evaluate whether recent land-system science (LSS) research into telecoupling provides a basis to set normative goals or priorities for addressing sustainability in coupled human-natural systems. We summarize the challenge...

En las pasadas cuatro décadas, las teorías de expansión de las fronteras han sido configuradas principalmente por estudios sobre colonización orientada por el Estado con base en pequeños propietarios. Sin embargo, actualmente, las fronteras agrícolas van quedando cada vez más bajo el control de la agricultura empresarial capitalizada, que opera con...

Spanish translation of the paper

Agricultural expansion and intensification drive the conversion of natural areas worldwide. Scenarios are powerful tools to explore possible future changes in agricultural land use, how these may affect the environment, and how policies may influence land-use patterns. Focusing on Argentina’s prime agricultural areas, the Pampas, Espinal and Chaco,...

Los sistemas silvopastoriles se han propuesto como alternativas productivas que pueden mitigar las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero mediante el secuestro de carbono. En el Chaco Seco Argentino, se realizan en bosques nativos y actualmente existen 14 millones de hectáreas que podrían tener este uso debido al reciente ordenamiento de bosques....

Los socioecosistemas de la Puna en contexto nacional y global ä Resumen-El funcionamiento socioecológico de la Puna argentina está fuertemente condicionado por sus interacciones con otras regiones. El principal motor de esas interac-ciones son los humanos, que llegaron a la Puna hace aproximadamente 11.000 años. Hace 4.000 años los ecosistemas pune...

Silvopastoril systems in Argentinean Dry Chaco are implemented in native woodland disturbing shrub layer to plant. These have been proposed as systems that maintain forest ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration. In recent years, they have increased in area and there are still 14 million of hectares in the region that allow silvopastoral pr...

Se remidieron parcelas forestales en bosque nativo en la región Chaco Seco argentino, durante el período 2007-2017. Se determinó el incremento periódico anual (IPA) para árboles >20 cm de DAP que estuvieron marcados en terreno al inicio y final del período. Se reporta el IPA para 16 especies de árboles nativos con importancia económica, de las cual...

Tropical dry forests and savannas provide important ecosystem services and harbor high biodiversity, yet are globally under pressure from land-use change. Mapping changes in the condition of dry forests and savannas is therefore critical. This can be challenging given that these ecosystems are characterized by continuous gradients of tree and shrub...

ABSTRACT. Structure and dynamics of palo santo forests in the Dry Chaco. Knowledge on the structure and dynamics of Bulnesia sarmientoi ("palo santo") populations is necessary for forest management aimed at the conservation and high-quality timber production by this species and the preservation of the ecosystem services of its forests. We character...

El conocimiento de la estructura y la dinámica de las poblaciones de Bulnesia sarmientoi ("palo santo") es necesario para una gestión forestal capaz de conservar la especie, asegurar la producción maderera de alta calidad y preservar los servicios ecosistémicos que brindan los bosques donde se encuentra. Se caracterizó la estructura y la dinámica f...

Phenology is a key ecosystem process that reflects climate–vegetation functioning, and is an indicator of global environmental changes. Recently, it has been suggested that land-use change and timber extraction promote differences in forest phenology. We use remote-sensing data to describe regional leaf phenological patterns in combination with fie...

Silvopastoral systems (SPS) provide a wide range of non-provisioning ecosystem services including carbon (C) sequestration. Well-managed SPS outperform both grasslands/pastures and forests in terms of C by increasing soil and biomass C storage. In this Chapter, C sequestration information from native forests and tree plantations under silvopastoral...

Agricultural expansion and intensification in South America's dry forests and grasslands increase agricultural production, but also result in major environmental trade-offs. The Pampas and Chaco regions of Argentina have been global hotspots of agricultural land-use change since the 2000s, yet our understanding of what drives the spatial patterns o...

ContextKnowing which factors determine the spread of plant invaders is a relevant issue in global ecology. Cultural landscapes both influence and are affected by exotic species. Although bioclimatic boundaries, seed sources and landscape configuration all control the invasion process, they have been mostly studied separately and independently from...

Theories of frontier expansion in the last four decades have been mostly shaped by studies of state-driven smallholder colonization. Modern-day agricultural frontiers, however, are increasingly driven by capitalized corporate agriculture operating with little direct government intervention. The expansion of contemporary frontiers has been explained...

This article reviews the current status, trends and challenges of land system science in Latin America. We highlight the advances in the conceptualization, analysis and monitoring of land systems. These advances shift from a focus on the relationships between forests and other land uses to include a greater diversity of land cover and land-use type...

South America’s tropical dry forests and savannas are under increasing pressure from agricultural expansion. Cattle ranching and soybean production both drive these forest losses, but their relative importance remains unclear. Also unclear is how soybean expansion elsewhere affects deforestation via pushing cattle ranching to deforestation frontier...

Rising global demand for agricultural products results in agricultural expansion and intensification, with substantial environmental trade-offs. The South American Dry Chaco contains some of the fastest expanding agricultural frontiers worldwide, and includes diverse forms of land management, mainly associated with different land tenure regimes; wh...

The Dry Chaco is one of the most active agriculture frontiers, which imposes trade-offs and synergies among ecosystem services (ES). Most studies analyze real or potential supply of ES associated to land use change; but they usually neglect ES social demands. Interviews to inhabitants of small urban centers in the Argentinean Dry Chaco revealed tha...

The subtropical dry forests are experiencing rapid clearing in the southamerican Great Chaco region, mainly for soybean production in Argentina. This is causing biodiversity loss and soil salinization. This forests are unique for the floristic richness and the dense forest cover in a region characterized by semiarid climatic conditions. The authors...

Carbon emissions from land-use changes in tropical dry forest systems are poorly understood, although they are likely globally significant. The South American Chaco has recently emerged as a hot spot of agricultural expansion and intensification, as cattle ranching and soybean cultivation expand into forests, and as soybean cultivation replaces gra...

Una de las medidas de mitigación del cambio climático más fomentadas es el secuestro de carbono por vegetación. Esto depende de la velocidad de captación y transformación del carbono en biomasa, velocidad de liberación a través de la respiración y estabilidad del stock ante disturbios. La diversidad forestal influye sobre estos factores, cuya efici...

La información presentada en este reporte fue realizada a partir de la información del RENSPA del SENASA en el marco de las colaboraciones entre el Instituto de Investigación Animal del Chaco Semiárido (IIACS-CIAP-INTA) y el Instituto de Ecología Regional (IER-UNT-CONICET). Los mapas presentados en este reporte en su formato de cobertura raster pue...

The Dry Chaco in Argentina is among the most dynamic deforestation frontiers in South America. Land-use competition in this region today mainly relates to trade-offs between on the one hand ecosystem services important for local communities (e.g., fuelwood, forage, hunting, subsistence farming) and on the other side global demands for both agricult...

This introductory chapter explores the notion of ‘distal drivers’ in land use competition. Research has moved beyond proximate causes of land cover and land use change to focus on the underlying drivers of these dynamics. We discuss the framework of telecoupling within human–environment systems as a first step to come to terms with the increasingly...