Banca de DEFESA: MILENA CORDEIRO DE AMORIM LOPES

Uma banca de DEFESA de DOUTORADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : MILENA CORDEIRO DE AMORIM LOPES
DATE: 30/04/2021
TIME: 09:00
LOCAL: Online via RNP - https://conferenciaweb.rnp.br/webconf/milenacordeiro
TITLE:

RETHINKING ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION THROUGH THE LENS OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND EARLY WARNING SIGNALS OF DESERTIFICATION

KEY WORDS:

Alternative stable states; Caatinga; dissimilarity; guidelines for successful restoration; interactive maps; restoration of resilience; species selection; suitability models; vegetation recovery and collapse.   

PAGES: 94
BIG AREA: Ciências Biológicas
AREA: Ecologia
SUMMARY:

Caatinga contemplates a great amount of biological diversity and ecosystem services and functions as an important carbon sink. However, this biome is among the most sensitive regions of the globe to climate variations and presents environmental conditions and anthropic actions that diminish its resilience. This work intends to: 1) Identify early warning signals for changes between vegetated and desertified states and indicate priority areas and emergency actions for restoration, improving the return on investments in restoration and combating desertification 2) Create guidelines that guide a sustainable forest restoration based on changes in composition by loss, gain and replacement of species in the face of expected climate changes; and 3) Provide lists of species that can be planted today and that will resist climate change for 1,112 municipalities on an interactive website, connecting the modeling results to decision makers and the general population. For chapter one we use a 20-year time series of Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI, 2000-2019) data, calculate the residual autocorrelation (critical slowing down) and the linear trend of the time series to identify whether the system tends to recover or collapse in terms of vegetation cover. 8.77% of the Caatinga has been approaching a critical transition point and, that of this amount, 66,121 km2 showed a tendency for recovery and a 7,938 km2 for vegetation cover collapse. Both recovery-prone and collapse-prone sites are concentrated in areas of natural vegetation, indicating that few degraded areas are tending to recover and that many areas of natural vegetation are tending to lose important ecosystem services. We believe that all of these areas need forest restoration, either by passive or active restoration within each level of urgency. For chapter two and three we built climate suitability models for the present and for the future (2050) for 606 Caatinga woody species. In chapter two we identified areas of species gain, species loss and areas where there will be species substitution, in order to suggest guidelines for restoration in the face of future climate change. We foresee 28.5% of the species will present geographical area expansion, 71.5% reduction and 0.5% will suffer extinction for the whole Caatinga territory. Local extinctions, on the other hand, occur in 88.9% of the regions, with only 11.1% of the Caatinga areas gaining species. Scenarios of species loss and high species turnover were registered, which makes the restoration planning much more challenging. Besides these scenarios, others were analyzed adding six combinations of changes in composition that require different guidelines for the sustainable practice of ecological restoration. The restoration guideline for each scenario was based on the following questions: 1) which restoration method to prioritize (spontaneous restoration or planting?); 2) when to invest in the maintenance of adjacent conservation units due to the future need for source areas?; 3) which species to plant and where to plant threatened species restricted to the biome in the face of the expected climate change? In chapter three, we detected the change in species richness in 1,112 municipalities, created 1,112 lists with the species that will best respond to the predicted climate change for each municipality, published the lists on an interactive map-based website, and finally schematized this workflow so that this method can be applied in other areas of the world. We predicted that of the 1,112 Caatinga municipalities, 809 showed a reduction in species richness, 286 gains, and 17 maintenance. Even in the municipalities where the balance was positive, a loss of species may have occurred at the same time that a greater number of other species were gained through colonization. Therefore, all regions to be restored need local investigations for the appropriate choice of species, and this information should be accessible to decision-makers and the general population. Our interactive website is an example of how to bring the scientific production of modelers closer to the practical needs of companies and people who need to implement restoration projects. This is because with just a cell phone connected to the internet the user can get a list of species that can be successfully planted in his municipality and that will survive future climate change. This diffusion of information can create a large-scale sustainable restoration project in the medium and long term. 

BANKING MEMBERS:
Externa à Instituição - CRISTINA BRANQUINHO - ULISBOA
Interno - 1678202 - CARLOS ROBERTO SORENSEN DUTRA DA FONSECA
Externo à Instituição - FELIPE PIMENTEL LOPES DE MELO - UFPE
Presidente - 1677189 - GISLENE MARIA DA SILVA GANADE
Interna - 1914239 - MIRIAM PLAZA PINTO