Abstract

BALDASSINI, Pablo  and  PARUELO, José M. Agricultural and silvopastoral systems in the semi-arid Chaco: Impacts on primary productivity. Ecol. austral [online]. 2020, vol.30, n.1, pp.45-62. ISSN 1667-782X.

Net primary production (NPP) is defined as the rate at which biomass accumulates per unit area and time and is considered an integrating variable of the ecosystem function. Deforestation and land use changes observed in the semi-arid Chaco region may affect total C gains and seasonality. Previous work in the region uses spectral vegetation indexes as a subrogate of the NPP. However, they arrive at contrary results and only concluded about to what happens with the aboveground production, without considering the changes that occur in the belowground production, which usually varies between physiognomic types of vegetation. Based on the model of radiation use efficiency, spectral information obtained from remote sensing and BNPP/NPP relationships of the bibliography, the goal of this work was to quantify the effect of the land use and cover change on the NPP and its seasonal variation. Specially, we evaluated the change on NPP in agricultural and silvopastoral systems with a variable woody component respect to the original forest. NPP and its seasonal variation of the main land uses of the semi-arid Chaco region. We observed that, in general, the land uses that showed higher aboveground productivity showed, at the same time, the lower levels of belowground productivity. The double wheat-maize crop presented the highest total NPP, significantly higher than that of the silvopastoral systems between 5 and 25% of tree cover, and to the wheat-soybean and soybean crops. However, their productivity did not vary significantly from that of the native forest, the tropical pastures and the maize. The results obtained not only provide substantial information to conclude quantitatively in terms of the magnitude of the change in units of dry matter, but also allow to establish a more appropriate order or ranking of land uses in terms of total productivity.

Keywords : Spectral indexes; Monteith model; Radiation use efficiency; Silvopastoral systems.

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