Identifying priority management of Ecuadorian forests based on the environmental integrated assessment

Silvia Alejandra Llerena ,Priscila Arias,Georgina Almeida,Jhonn Cueva,Cristian A Salazar Flores

doi:10.1051/e3sconf/202016902015

Silvia Alejandra Llerena , Priscila Arias + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/202016902015

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Abstract

Anthropogenic impacts, such as deforestation, soil erosion, and carbon dioxide emissions, have a negative influence over global warming due to the increase of CO2 levels in the atmosphere. The sustainable forest management is a way to mitigate climate change owing to the carbon storage capacity of forests. This study highlights the priority of forest management according to the integrated assessment of carbon storage under anthropogenic impacts in the administrative units of Ecuador. In the obtained map, the provinces Guayas, Esmeraldas, and Manabí showed the highest values of 25, 22.85 and 19.9, respectively, followed by two Amazon provinces, Morona Santiago and Sucumbíos. Therefore, we concluded that deforestation, soil erosion, and carbon dioxide emissions were more pronounced on the coast mainly due to agriculture and livestock activities and the forests in these provinces must have priority management. This analysis is useful for planning environmental practices in order to increase carbon storage as a strategy of mitigation for global warming.

Highlights

The world is suffering several global changes due to an unbalance between the human population increase and the capacity of the resources to sustain the increasing demand in the ecosystem services
Our research consisted of three stages: (1) collecting data of deforestation, anthropogenic soil erosion, carbon dioxide emissions, biomass, and organic carbon; (2) an integrated assessment with environmental indicators based on the collected data; and (3) the development of a forest management priority map based on integral factor values
Our results revealed that the forest management priority is concentrated on Guayas region (Fig. 2), the principal environmental indicator that encourages this behavior is the carbon dioxide emission (44114,44 ton), followed by the deforestation rate (Table 1 and Figure 1)

Summary

Introduction

The world is suffering several global changes due to an unbalance between the human population increase and the capacity of the resources to sustain the increasing demand in the ecosystem services. Magrin and colleagues explain how the anthropogenic impacts such as deforestation, soil degradation, and human emissions have contributed to climate change [1], being deforestation the second-largest source of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions [2]. It is an effective way of climate change mitigation because forests have the capacity for carbon uptake and storage it in biomass and soils

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