Improving the Knowledge of Plant Potential Biodiversity-Ecosystem
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Rosas et al. Ecological Processes (2021) 10:53 https://doi.org/10.1186/s13717-021-00326-0 RESEARCH Open Access Improving the knowledge of plant potential biodiversity-ecosystem services links using maps at the regional level in Southern Patagonia Yamina Micaela Rosas1 , Pablo L. Peri2 , María Vanessa Lencinas1 , Romina Lasagno3 and Guillermo J. Martínez Pastur1* Abstract Background: Biodiversity supports multiple ecosystem services, whereas species loss endangers the provision of many services and affects ecosystem resilience and resistance capacity. The increase of remote sensing techniques allows to estimate biodiversity and ecosystem services supply at the landscape level in areas with low available data (e.g. Southern Patagonia). This paper evaluates the potential biodiversity and how it links with ecosystem services, based on vascular plant species across eight ecological areas. We also evaluated the habitat plant requirements and their relation with natural gradients. A total of 977 plots were used to develop habitat suitability maps based on an environmental niche factor analysis of 15 more important indicator species for each ecological area (n = 53 species) using 40 explanatory variables. Finally, these maps were combined into a single potential biodiversity map, which was linked with environmental variables and ecosystem services supply. For comparisons, data were extracted and compared through analyses of variance. Results: The plant habitat requirements varied greatly among the different ecological areas, and it was possible to define groups according to its specialization and marginality indexes. The potential biodiversity map allowed us to detect coldspots in the western mountains and hotspots in southern and eastern areas. Higher biodiversity was associated to higher temperatures and normalized difference vegetation index, while lower biodiversity was related to elevation and rainfall. Potential biodiversity was closely associated with supporting and provisioning ecosystem services in shrublands and grasslands in the humid steppe, while the lowest values were related to cultural ecosystem services in Nothofagus forests. * Correspondence: [email protected] 1Laboratorio de Recursos Agroforestales, Centro Austral de Investigaciones Científicas (CADIC), Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Houssay 200, 9410 Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2021 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Rosas et al. Ecological Processes (2021) 10:53 Page 2 of 26 Conclusions: The present study showed that plant species present remarkable differences in spatial distributions and ecological requirements, being a useful proxy for potential biodiversity modelling. Potential biodiversity values change across ecological areas allowing to identify hotspots and coldspots, a useful tool for landscape management and conservation strategies. In addition, links with ecosystem services detect potential synergies and trade-offs, where areas with the lowest potential biodiversity are related to cultural ecosystem services (e.g. aesthetic values) and areas with the greatest potential biodiversity showed threats related to productive activities (e.g. livestock). Keywords: Habitat suitability, Environmental variables, Ecosystem functions, Conservation management, Ecosystem services, Landscape modelling Introduction habitat prediction at the landscape level (Wiersma et al. Biodiversity is critical to support multiple ecosystem ser- 2011). One of the most employed methods is based on vices (ES) (MEA 2005; Cardinale 2012; Mace et al. the combination of field plots with satellite data (Dubuis 2012). Several studies agree that plant biodiversity et al. 2013; Pottier et al. 2013), where the Biomapper strongly affects supporting and regulating ES, e.g. soil software showed its advantage to the development of po- nutrients cycling, productivity, and erosion control tential habitability suitability (PHS) models (Hirzel et al. (Chen et al. 2018; Peri et al. 2019a; Ma et al. 2020). Fur- 2001, 2006) in areas with scarce data as Southern Pata- thermore, plant communities provide essential habitats gonia (Rosas et al. 2017). These models relate regional for a wide range of species (Wen et al. 2020). Traditional environmental characteristics (e.g. climatic, topographic, management only focused on few provisioning ES, which landscape) with the occurrence of species in one particu- is one of the main threats to biodiversity (Kohler et al. lar area (Guisan and Zimmermann 2000; Hirzel et al. 2017). As a consequence, biodiversity loss endangers the 2002) determining the PHS of each species. During the provision of many other ES (MAES 2013; Shih 2020), af- last years, studies in plant species distribution were sig- fecting ecosystem resilience and resistance capacity to nificantly increased (Bradley et al. 2012), mostly related face climate change or species invasions (Kohler et al. to woody species (Silva et al. 2017), and invasive (Chai 2017; Pires et al. 2018). Nevertheless, understanding et al. 2016; Wan and Wang 2018) or endangered plant these complex interactions represent a challenge, due to species (Abdelaal et al. 2020). Nevertheless, few studies the multiple roles that biodiversity plays in the delivery combined multiple PHS to create a unique potential bio- of ES (MAES 2013; Mori et al. 2017). diversity map (PBM) that synthetizes the information for Different factors affect species diversity distribution, multiple species at the landscape level (e.g. Martínez where environmental heterogeneity (e.g. climate, soil, Pastur et al. 2016a; Rosas et al. 2019a). PHS maps allow and topography) is the main driver for landscape vari- to understand the ecology of ecosystem communities ation in species composition across different taxa and bi- (Martínez Pastur et al. 2016a), recognize environmental omes (Stein et al. 2014; Li et al. 2020). In consequence, predictors of species distribution (Dubuis et al. 2013; plant biodiversity changes according to the different eco- Pottier et al. 2013), identify potential hotspots of bio- system types, e.g. temperate forests present unique diversity (Wulff et al. 2013), and analyse the natural pro- understory species associated with tree canopy structure tected area network effectiveness and representativeness and composition (Barbier et al. 2008; Lencinas et al. (Rosas et al. 2019a). However, few studies have linked 2008), while grasslands present characteristic species as- the biodiversity and the ES supply to understand their sociated with temperature and rainfall gradients (Peri relationship and support landscape management and et al. 2016a; Li et al. 2020). In addition, soil characteris- conservation planning (Martínez Pastur et al. 2017; Shih tics as stock carbon and water balance, and topography 2020). as elevation and slope, influence plant distribution, rich- Southern Patagonia, specifically Santa Cruz Province, ness, and diversity (e.g. Dubuis et al. 2013; Pottier et al. has a well-conserved wilderness landscape with a unique 2013; Peri et al. 2019a; Jordan et al. 2020). However, it is ecosystem variety, where temperature and rainfall pat- not totally understood how plant species distribution is terns strongly defined the natural vegetation types. The linked with regional environmental variables (Kreft and region can be classified into eight main ecological areas, Jetz 2007; Xu et al. 2016; Martínez Pastur et al. 2016a) where dry steppes dominate in the northeast (central and how biodiversity is related to ES supply (Schneiders plateau, shrub-steppe of San Jorge Gulf, and mountains et al. 2012; Martínez Pastur et al. 2017). Remote sensing and plateaus), and shrublands and humid steppes techniques became a powerful tool for qualitative and (humid and dry Magellanic grass steppe) prevail in the quantitative modelling of plant species distribution and southeast, while sub-Andean grasslands, Nothofagus Rosas et al. Ecological Processes (2021) 10:53 Page 3 of 26 forests, and alpine vegetation occupy a narrow strip in are mainly under protected areas (Peri et al. 2019c). the west (Oliva et al. 2004) (Fig. 1). The vegetation types These studies also determined the impact of forest influence the provisioning ES delivery, generating several management alternatives on N. antarctica forests, trade-offs between biodiversity and other ES supplies where some multi-objective strategies (e.g. silvopas- (Peri et al. 2016a, 2018, 2019b). Traditionally, steppe and toral systems) allowed to maintain biodiversity values shrubland areas present provisioning ES related to live- and increase ES delivery on time. stock production,