Trade-offs between agriculture and biodiversity conservation in the South American Chaco

全球生物多样性正在迅速减少，这一点令人极为关切，因为生物多样性具有内在价值，对人类福祉至关重要。由于生境丧失、退化和破碎化，土地使用的变化是这种下降的主要原因。由于需求激增，陆地生产将不得不增加，这些压力将进一步放大。显然，人类面临的一个核心挑战是如何平衡农业土地的使用与自然生态系统和生物多样性的保护。系统的权衡分析可以确定未实现的潜力，以协调农业和保护的目标往往相互冲突，但这需要详细了解生物多样性如何应对土地使用的变化。不幸的是，在生物多样性最丰富和土地使用变化迅速和剧烈的地区，这种知识往往特别缺乏，本项目将评估阿根廷查科区域范围内最近土地使用的变化和农业与生物多样性之间的权衡。全球化引发了那里农业的疯狂扩张和集约化，但不幸的是，人们对最近土地使用的变化及其生物多样性影响都没有很好的了解。我们将充分利用陆地卫星图像档案，获得大面积图像合成，并使用机器学习变化检测算法来重建阿根廷查科30年来的土地利用变化。为了评估生物多样性，我们将沿着土地利用强度梯度进行快速鸟类群落调查，以获得一系列多样性指标。鸟类是很好的生物多样性替代品，可以相对容易地以标准化的方式在大面积上进行调查。然后，我们将使用基于非参数模型选择例程来了解土地利用变化和鸟类多样性指标的关系，特别是关于农业强度的变化。最后，我们将采用一种新的优化方法，利用农业生产力和鸟类多样性指标，系统地评估农业生产和生物多样性之间的权衡，以确定不同土地利用的水平，最好地协调查科的生产和保护目标。从而提高我们对土地利用如何影响生物多样性的理解。该项目还将产生新的见解，如何在全球化面前调整农业和保护的往往相互冲突的目标。通过这样做，这里提出的项目将为土地利用科学，保护科学和可持续发展科学领域做出重大贡献。我们的项目结果将为保护和土地利用规划提供指导，以寻求在查科过渡到一个更可持续的未来。

Global biodiversity is eroding rapidly, which is of great concern because of the intrinsic value of biodiversity and its importance for human well-being. Land use change has been the main cause of this decline due to habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation. These pressures will amplify further as land-based production will have to increase due to surging demand. Clearly, a central challenge for humankind is how to balance agricultural land use with the conservation of natural ecosystems and biodiversity. Systematic trade-off analyses can identify unrealized potentials for aligning the often conflicting goals of agriculture and conservation, but this requires detailed knowledge on how biodiversity responds to land use change. Such knowledge is, unfortunately, often particularly scarce in those areas where most biodiversity is found and where land use change is rapid and drastic.This project will assess recent land use changes and the trade-offs between agriculture and biodiversity at the regional scale in the Argentine Chaco. Globalization has triggered rampant agricultural expansion and intensification there, but unfortunately neither recent land use changes nor their biodiversity effects are well understood. Making full use of the Landsat image archive, we will derive large-area image composites and use machine-learning change detection algorithms to reconstruct 30 years of land use change for the Argentine Chaco. To assess biodiversity, we will carry out a rapid bird community survey along a gradient of land use intensity to derive a range of diversity metrics. Birds are excellent biodiversity surrogates and can be surveyed relatively easily across large areas in a standardized way. We will then use non-parametric model selection routines based to understand the relationship of land use change and bird diversity indicators, particularly regarding changes in agricultural intensity. Finally, we will use agricultural productivity and bird diversity indicators in a novel optimization approach to systematically assess the trade-offs among agricultural production and biodiversity in order to identify levels of different land uses that would aligning production and conservation goals best in the Chaco.This project will carry out one of the first regional-scale trade-off analyses between biodiversity and agriculture for a highly dynamic region, thereby improving our understanding of how land use affects biodiversity in general. The project will also generate novel insights into how to align the often conflicting goals of agriculture and conservation in the face of globalization. In doing so, the project proposed here will make substantial contributions to the fields of land use science, conservation science, and sustainability science. Our project results will provide guidance for conservation and land use planning seeking to transition to a more sustainable future in the Chaco.