Title
New Tool for Monitoring Land Management and its Biodiversity
Author(s)
Valenzuela, Leonor; Forero-Medina, German; Franco, Padu; Goldstein, Isaac; Gutierrez, Johanna; Pulgarin, David; Ríos, Carlos
Published
2017
Abstract
Management of terrestrial biodiversity requires monitoring the positive and negative effects of human activities, as this data enables us to take decisions regarding the development of such activities. However, this is not an easy task especially for government agencies with restrictions on staff and budget. Therefore, we present a simple tool that allows natural resource managers to estimate environmental balance of planned activities, using inputs from remote sensing and data related to each of the productive projects (i.e., mining, infrastructure, forestry, etc.). We used planned activities because with these authorities can exercise greater control. Terrestrial biodiversity management is focused in three conservation targets: forests - by type; distribution of focal species; and relative abundance of timber species. The development of the tool was possible using the integration of a database management system such as Postgis and MySQL and using open source servers as GeoServer and Zend Framework, which facilitates the access and the development of the tool because it works with open access and online software. The developed monitoring tool enables the estimation of the state of each conservation target and the observed balances according to: all landscape, the set of planned activities (productive and conservation ones), and to each project level. It also estimates the expected balance for productive activities. Therefore, the monitoring can assist in the decision-making processes at different management levels, i.e., from the project level regarding to granting, modification or sanctions of the requested procedure; through the basic guidelines for defining environmental obligations (compensations and management plans) to regional environmental management related to watershed management plan and territorial management plans.

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PUB26945