Analyse von Zielkonflikten zwischen landwirtschaftlicher Nutzung und Biodiversitätsschutz im südamerikanischen Chaco

• Antragsteller: Professor Dr. Tobias Kümmerle
• Fachliche Zuordnung: Physische Geographie
• Förderung: Förderung von 2015 bis 2020
• Projektkennung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 271778042

• Erstellungsjahr: 2019

Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse

The project reached all overarching aims originally laid out and resulted in substantial insights into land-use change dynamics in the Chaco, how these impact biodiversity, and how agriculture/Biodiversity trade-offs in the Chaco could be mitigated. Given the understudied nature of this region, our results fill an important geographic knowledge gap, but also contribute more widely to the fields of land system science, conservation science, biodiversity research, and sustainability research. Specifically, our work resulted in:  The first assessment of land-cover/use dynamics at fine spatial resolution back to 1985, highlighting both deforestation as well as post-deforestation dynamics. The resulting maps have been used in a wide range of studies (our own and others) already.  The first assessment of carbon emissions related to deforestation in the Chaco, showing that emissions are comparable than those form other major tropical deforestation frontiers (Amazonia, Borneo).  The most comprehensive biodiversity databases assembled so far for the Chaco, for birds and mammals.  New biogeographic insights on the distribution of birds and mammals, including keystone species (e.g. jaguars) as well as geographic patterns of community-level indicators such as taxonomic and functional richness.  Novel insights into the response of biodiversity to land-use change in the Chaco, including the detection of non-linear and threshold-type responses, time-delayed responses and interaction among land-use change and landscape context in mediated responses.  The first assessment of agriculture/biodiversity trade-offs in the Chaco, highlighting (1) major room for improvement in at least one of these targets, (2) the potentially large role of silvopastoral grazing systems for mitigating trade-offs, (3) the possibility to align agribusiness and smallholder agriculture with biodiversity conservation, and (4) opportunities for better zoning of land use in the region. Problems and challenges related particularly to the homogenization of datasets, and the implementation of the multi-species occupancy and spatial optimization frameworks that served to analyze trade-offs in the Chaco. Both took substantially longer than envisioned. The project received wide media coverage including by national newspapers (e.g., FAZ, Süddeutsche, Die Zeit), international newspapers (e.g. The Guardian), and online-media (e.g., Spiegel Online, Mongabay). The project was featured in several TV- and radio-formats (e.g., Frontal21, Deutschlandfunk, ARD-Videotext). We disseminated results via stakeholder meetings and public debates in Argentina and Germany, as well as via targeted policy briefs.

Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)

• (2017). Carbon emissions from agricultural expansion and intensification in the Chaco. Global Change Biology, 23, 1902-1916
  Baumann M., Gasparri I., Piquer-Rodríguez M., Gavier Pizarro G., Griffiths P., Hostert P., & Kuemmerle T.
  
• (2017): Forest conservation: Remember Gran Chaco. Science, 355, 465-466
  Kuemmerle T., Altrichter M., Baldi G., Cabido M., Camino M., Cuellar E., Cuellar R., L., Decarre J., Díaz S., Gasparri S., Gavier Pizarro G., Ginzburg R., Giordano A. J., Grau H. R., Jobbágy E., Leynaud G., Macchi L., Mastrangelo M., Matteucci S. D., Noss A., Paruelo J., Piquer-Rodríguez M., Romero-Muñoz A., Semper-Pascual A., Thompson J., Torrella S., Torres R., Volante J.N., Yanosky A. & Zak M.
  
• (2018). Mapping extinction debt highlights conservation opportunities for birds and mammals in the South American Chaco. Journal of Applied Ecology, 55, 1218-1229
  Semper-Pascual, A., Macchi, L., Sabatini, F.M., Decarre, J., Baumann, M., Blendinger, P.G., Gómez-Valencia, B., Mastrangelo, M.E., & Kuemmerle, T.
  
• (2018): Mapping continuous fields of tree and shrub cover across the Gran Chaco using Landsat 8 and Sentinel-1 data. Remote Sensing of Environment, 216, 201-211
  Baumann. M., Levers C., Macchi L., Bluhm H., Waske B., Gasparri I. & Kuemmerle T.
  
• (2018): Opportunities of multi-scale spatial planning to maintain forest connectivity in the Argentine Chaco despite deforestation. Ecology & Society, 23:24
  Torrella S., Piquer-Rodríguez M., Levers C., Ginzburg R., Gavier Pizarro G. & Kuemmerle T.
  
• (2019). Biodiversity loss in deforestation frontiers: Linking occupancy modelling and physiological stress indicators to understand local extinctions. Biological Conservation, 236, 281-288
  Semper-Pascual, A., Decarre, J., Baumann, M., Busso, J.M., Camino, M., Gómez-Valencia, B., & Kuemmerle, T.
  
• (2019). Habitat loss and overhunting synergistically drive the extirpation of jaguars from the Gran Chaco. Diversity and Distributions, 25, 176-190
  Romero-Muñoz A., Torres R., Noss A.J., Giordano A.J., Quiroga V., Thompson J.J., Baumann M., Altrichter M., McBride Jr R., Velilla M., Arispe R., & Kuemmerle T.
  
• (2019). Thresholds in forest bird communities along woody vegetation gradients in the South American Dry Chaco. Journal of Applied Ecology, 56, 629-639
  Macchi L., Baumann M., Bluhm H., Baker M., Levers C., Grau H.R., & Kuemmerle, T.