TY - JOUR

T1 - Potential biodiversity map of lizard species in Southern Patagonia

T2 - Environmental characterization, desertification influence and analyses of protection areas

AU - Rosas, Yamina Micaela

AU - Peri, Pablo Luis

AU - Martínez Pastur, Guillermo

N1 - Funding Information: Acknowledgements. This research is part of the doctoral thesis of YMR (Faculty of Ciencias Agrarias y Forestales in the Universidad Nacional de la Plata). This research was supported by the financial support of the “Operationalisa-tion of Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital: From concepts to real-world applications (OpenNESS)” project financed under the European Commission’s Seventh Frame-work Programme (project number 308428). Publisher Copyright: © Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

PY - 2018

Y1 - 2018

N2 - The distribution of biodiversity at the landscape level is shaped by biotic, abiotic and anthropogenic factors. Biodiversity maps provide the basis for defining management and conservation strategies that can minimize human impacts. The objective was to elaborate a map of potential biodiversity of lizards based on habitat suitability maps of individual species in Santa Cruz (Argentina). Also, we analysed desertification influence and the representativeness of the current network of protected areas on the lizard biodiversity. For this, we used a database of eight lizard species and we explored 41 potential explanatory variables to develop habitat suitability maps, which were combined to obtain one single map of the potential biodiversity. We analysed the outputs in a GIS project using the marginality and the specialization indexes and the normalized difference vegetation index of each species. Also, we characterized the potential biodiversity using the following variables: desertification, ecological areas and current network of protected areas. We detected differences in the occupied niches for the different species throughout the landscape. The map of potential biodiversity uncovered hotspots of biodiversity in the north-east study area, where the prevalence of unique climatic conditions showed a dry steppe and a high degree of desertification due to the human impacts (e.g. livestock). These results can be readily used as a support system for conservation and management strategies at different scale levels in areas with higher human impacts or to develop new protection areas.

AB - The distribution of biodiversity at the landscape level is shaped by biotic, abiotic and anthropogenic factors. Biodiversity maps provide the basis for defining management and conservation strategies that can minimize human impacts. The objective was to elaborate a map of potential biodiversity of lizards based on habitat suitability maps of individual species in Santa Cruz (Argentina). Also, we analysed desertification influence and the representativeness of the current network of protected areas on the lizard biodiversity. For this, we used a database of eight lizard species and we explored 41 potential explanatory variables to develop habitat suitability maps, which were combined to obtain one single map of the potential biodiversity. We analysed the outputs in a GIS project using the marginality and the specialization indexes and the normalized difference vegetation index of each species. Also, we characterized the potential biodiversity using the following variables: desertification, ecological areas and current network of protected areas. We detected differences in the occupied niches for the different species throughout the landscape. The map of potential biodiversity uncovered hotspots of biodiversity in the north-east study area, where the prevalence of unique climatic conditions showed a dry steppe and a high degree of desertification due to the human impacts (e.g. livestock). These results can be readily used as a support system for conservation and management strategies at different scale levels in areas with higher human impacts or to develop new protection areas.

KW - climatic and topographic variables

KW - conservation

KW - ENFA

KW - habitat suitability

KW - human impacts

KW - reptiles

U2 - 10.1163/15685381-20181001

DO - 10.1163/15685381-20181001

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85049503561

VL - 39

SP - 289

EP - 301

JO - Amphibia - Reptilia

JF - Amphibia - Reptilia

SN - 0173-5373

IS - 3

ER -