Environmental and human controls of ecosystem functional diversity in temperate South America

• Autores: Alcaraz Segura, Domingo; Paruelo, José María; Epstein, Howard E.; Cabello, Javier
• Año de publicación: 2013
• Idioma: inglés
• Tipo de recurso: artículo
• Fuente: Remote Sensing; Vol.5, no.1; 127-154; http://www.mdpi.com/journal/remotesensing
• Materia: ECOSYSTEM FUNCTIONAL DIVERSITY; ECOSYSTEM FUNCTIONAL TYPES; ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROLS; HUMAN CONTROLS; MODIS EVI; RICHNESS; SOUTH AMERICA; ECOSYSTEM FUNCTIONING; ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL; FUNCTIONAL DIVERSITY; FUNCTIONAL TYPES; HUMAN CONTROL; BIODIVERSITY; CARBON; DYNAMICS; FORESTRY; PHENOLS; RADIOMETERS; ECOSYSTEMS
• Institución: Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Agronomía

Fil: Alcaraz Segura, Domingo. Universidad de Granada. Facultad de Ciencias. Departamento de Botánica. Campus Universitario de Fuentenueva, Granada, España.
Fil: Paruelo, José María. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Agronomía. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisiológicas y Ecológicas Vinculadas a la Agricultura (IFEVA). Laboratorio de Análisis Regional y Teledetección (LART) Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Fil: Paruelo, José María. CONICET – Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Agronomía. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisiológicas y Ecológicas Vinculadas a la Agricultura (IFEVA). Laboratorio de Análisis Regional y Teledetección (LART) Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Fil: Paruelo, José María. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Agronomía. Departamento de Métodos Cuantitativos y Sistemas de Información. Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Fil: Epstein, Howard E. University of Virginia. Environmental Sciences Department. Charlottesville, VA 22904, USA.
Fil: Cabello, Javier. Universidad de Almería. Centro Andaluz para la Evaluación y Seguimiento del Cambio Global. Departamento Biología Vegetal y Ecología. La Cañada de San Urbano, Almería, España.
The regional controls of biodiversity patterns have been traditionally evaluated using structural and compositional components at the species level, but evaluation of the functional component at the ecosystem level is still scarce. During the last decades, the role of ecosystem functioning in management and conservation has increased. Our aim was to use satellite-derived Ecosystem Functional Types (EFTs, patches of the land-surface with similar carbon gain dynamics) to characterize the regional patterns of ecosystem functional diversity and to evaluate the environmental and human controls that determine EFT richness across natural and human-modified systems in temperate South America. The EFT identification was based on three descriptors of carbon gain dynamics derived from seasonal curves of the MODIS Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) : annual mean (surrogate of primary production), seasonal coefficient of variation (indicator of seasonality) and date of maximum EVI (descriptor of phenology). As observed for species richness in the southern hemisphere, water availability, not energy, emerged as the main climatic driver ofEFT richness in natural areas of temperate South America. In anthropogenic areas, the role of both water and energy decreased and increasing human intervention increased richness at low levels of human influence, but decreased richness at high levels of human influence.