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Landscapes Forest and Global Change - ESA - Escola Superior ...

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M.L Porto et al. 2010. Naturalness <strong>and</strong> diversity of biotopes: their impact on l<strong>and</strong>scape quality 525 iii<br />

As before multiplication of Eq. (6) by the diversity H' yields the index of environmental value<br />

of a biotope due to its fauna.<br />

IVA faun = INT faun *H´faun . (7)<br />

The index of environmental value of a circular biotope X i based on its naturalness <strong>and</strong> diversity,<br />

IVA oi , is the sum of its values IVA flor <strong>and</strong> IVA faun.<br />

IVA oi = IVA flor (i) + C*IVA faun (i). (8)<br />

C is the relative weight with which fauna <strong>and</strong> flora, respectively, contribute to the total<br />

environmental value of biotope i.<br />

To account for the fact that in general biotope Xi has a non-circular shape we introduce the<br />

factor<br />

(K F ) i = 2*(Π * A i ) ½ / P i (9)<br />

(K F ) i varies between 0 (biotope with extremely corrugated edge) <strong>and</strong> 1 (circular biotope). With<br />

this factor we define the index of environmental value of a biotope Xi to be<br />

IVA i = ((2 - (K F ) i ) * IVA oi (10)<br />

The index of environmental value of a l<strong>and</strong>scape based on the naturalness of its constituent<br />

biotopes, IVA tot , corresponds to the weight average of the environmental values of the biotopes:<br />

IVA tot = (A tot ) -1 * Σ A i * IVA i = (A tot ) -1 * Σ A i *((2 - (K F ) i ) * IVA oi (11)<br />

The weight with which biotope i enters this equation corresponds to its relative biotope area<br />

A i *(A tot ) -1 . (K F ) i is defined by Eq. (9), IVA oi through Eq. (8), <strong>and</strong> Σ represents a sum over all n<br />

biotopes that shape the l<strong>and</strong>scape.<br />

3. Result <strong>and</strong> Discussion<br />

We applied the model to a circular test sample of 200 m radius. Sample was chosen out of an<br />

area of survey located in the city of Treviso, State of Santa Catarina, southern Brazil. Its<br />

covering is hetero-genous: remnants of original vegetation (humid atlantic coastal forest), areas<br />

used for agriculture (livestock, fruit plantations), large waste deposits of coal mines <strong>and</strong> areas<br />

reforested with Eucalyptus. The area was found to be describable on the basis of five resilient<br />

natural biotopes: climax forest (GB1), early secondary forest (GB2), late secondary forest<br />

(GB3), eucalyptus plantation with forest regeneration (GB4), anthropogenic grassl<strong>and</strong>s (GB5),<br />

Fig 1. For each generic biotope we carried out phytossociological surveys <strong>and</strong> calculated the<br />

appropriate indices of importance, relative densities, <strong>and</strong> Shannon´s indices of diversity (Porto<br />

et al.. 2010) needed for executing Eq.(11). Structural information such as area <strong>and</strong><br />

circumference of the patches constituting the test sample was extracted from the digital image of<br />

the area of investigation. The resulting indices of environmental value, IVA, for the generic<br />

biotopes are shown in Fig. 2.<br />

According to our model, assumption of high diversity implying automatically high<br />

environmental quality is not valid (Fig. 2). On the scale of biotope for example, generic<br />

biotopes 4 <strong>and</strong> 5 exhibit relative high values of diversity both in fauna <strong>and</strong> flora. Their<br />

respective indices of environmental value though are lowest in the set of the five generic<br />

biotopes. This is because the corresponding indices of naturalness compensate the high values<br />

<strong>Forest</strong> <strong>L<strong>and</strong>scapes</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>Global</strong> <strong>Change</strong>-New Frontiers in Management, Conservation <strong>and</strong> Restoration. Proceedings of the IUFRO L<strong>and</strong>scape Ecology<br />

Working Group International Conference, September 21-27, 2010, Bragança, Portugal. J.C. Azevedo, M. Feliciano, J. Castro & M.A. Pinto (eds.)<br />

2010, Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Bragança, Portugal.

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