Abstract

MANCILLA RUIZ, Diana; GONZALEZ PAZ, Sergio; VIRANO REYES, Patricia  and  DE LA BARRERA MELGAREJO, Francisco. Nuevas oportunidades de conservación y restauración en un paisaje rural-urbano degradado de la región del Maule (Chile) mediante imágenes Sentinel 2. Rev. Univ. geogr. [online]. 2022, vol.31, n.2, pp.77-108. ISSN 1852-4265.

Ecological Infrastructure is an instrumental concept that proposes an interconnected network of natural areas that are key to maintain biodiversity and provide ecosystem services. In Chile, seven of its sixteen administrative regions have Regional Ecological Infrastructure (IER) plans that define natural areas to be conserved and restored. The Maule region has had its IER since 2018, however, its conservation and restoration areas are concentrated in the coastal and Andean zone; and the longitudinal valley area is practically empty. In this work, the landscape was evaluated with data of higher detail (Sentinel) than that used in the design of the IER (Landsat), to detect new opportunities for conservation and / or restoration, and evaluate the potential improvement of the connectivity of the landscape to local scale. The results show that in the longitudinal valley dominated by crops there are small fragments with natural cover that represent new opportunities to conserve in this area representing 33,000 ha, and that 46,000 ha of the 82,000 ha already allocated by EI for their conservation, require restoration actions. This approach can be useful for planning and management at the local level in regions that have REIs, especially in localities that have few conservation or restoration areas.

Keywords : Landscape; Green Infrastructure; Satellite Images; Conservation; Restoration.

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