Ecosystem Services in a Protected Mountain Range of Portugal: Satellite-Based Products for State and Trend Analysis

Abstract

Mountains are facing strong environmental pressures, which may jeopardize the supply of various ecosystem services. For sustainable land management, ecosystem services and their supporting functions should thus be evaluated and monitored. Satellite products have been receiving growing attention for monitoring ecosystem functioning, mainly due to their increasing temporal and spatial resolutions. Here, we aim to illustrate the high potential of satellite products, combined with ancillary in situ and statistical data, to monitor the current state and trend of ecosystem services in the Peneda-Gerês National Park, a protected mountain range in Portugal located in a transition climatic zone (Atlantic to Mediterranean). We focused on three ecosystem services belonging to three broad categories: provisioning (reared animals), regulating (of water flows), and cultural (conservation of an endemic and iconic species). These services were evaluated using a set of different satellite products, namely grassland cover, soil moisture, and ecosystem functional attributes. In situ and statistical data were also used to compute final indicators of ecosystem services. We found a decline in the provision of reared animals since year 2000, although the area of grasslands had remained stable. The regulation of water flows had been maintained, and a strong relationship with interannual precipitation pattern was noted. In the same period, conservation of the focal iconic species might have been affected by interannual fluctuations of suitable habitat areas, with a possible influence of wildfires and precipitation. We conclude that satellite products can efficiently provide information about the current state and trend in the supply of various categories of ecosystem services, especially when combined with in situ or statistical data in robust modeling frameworks.

Effects of input data sources on species distribution model predictions across species with different distributional ranges

“…eBird‐based models provided more accurate predictions for less common species (the narrow range) than Atlas data that recorded much more widespread species, with strong implications for species conservation. Our results also confirmed that model predictions benefit from the combination of macroclimate data and remote‐sensing‐derived EFAs, which has also implications for both conservation (Arenas‐Castro et al, 2019; Regos et al, 2020) and management (Carvalho‐Santos et al, 2018). Among other drawbacks, we also showed that there are important biases in model estimation as well as overconfidence about results accuracy or quality (e.g.…”

UAV RTK/PPK Method—An Optimal Solution for Mapping Inaccessible Forested Areas?

“…Remote sensing techniques can be helpful in such cases and have been commonly used for this purpose [1][2][3][4]. Such studies mostly focus on estimation of canopy height since this is the most critical factor to predict risk [1,[5][6][7][8][9] but they also estimate other inventory parameters like tree basal area, volume (e.g., [3]) or ecosystem services [10]. The detection of individual trees in dense forests is also possible, driving the forest inventory from stand-and plot-level to single tree levels [11][12][13].…”

Spatiotemporal Variation Characteristics of Ecosystem Service Losses in the Agro-Pastoral Ecotone of Northern China

“…Long-term eco-restoration projects are critical in sustainable ecological and economic development [31,63,64]. Since the end of the 1990s, China has initiated specific ecological protection polices, such as the Grain for Green Project, the Beijing–Tianjin Dust Storms Sources Control Project, Grassland Ecological Protection Subsidy Incentives, and the Grain for Forage Project, with remarkable effects.…”