Characterization and distribution of woody communities in southern Espinal-Monte ecotone, Argentina

Abstract

Woody vegetation in southern Espinal-Monte ecotone plays key roles in the system, such as protecting soil against erosion processes. They are also a source of firewood for the human populations of Patagonia, whose economic value in the commercial forestry circuit is not considered. The ecotonal region includes three different provinces with different forest protection and management criteria, making it difficult to have quantitative and qualitative information on the forest resource to establish comprehensive management guidelines. In this work, our objective is to characterize woody vegetation according to a cover classification (open and dense) to describe the structural and compositional variation in a geographic-climatic gradient and to map the distribution of cover classes. The sites located to the northeast were associated with wooded situations, with a higher frequency of tree species representative of the Espinal. Although dense cover situations were found throughout the geographical gradient, dense situations were concentrated towards the NE of the region, and open situations were concentrated towards the SW. The dense situations of the NE differed significantly from the dense situations of the SW by presenting greater coverage and the average height of the tree and shrub strata. The open situations of the NE differed significantly from the open situations of the SW by presenting higher values in tree cover and the average height of the shrub layer, while the richness was higher in the SW sites with respect to the NE sites. The characterization and mapping of woody vegetation allows us to know the state of conservation of these communities as well as the economic, commercial, and environmental value of forest resources, within the framework of the territorial planning of the Monte-Espinal transition in northeastern Patagonia.