Le lundi 28 octobre 2019 à 11h, Daniel Morant (Tour du Valat & Cavanilles Institute of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology [1]. Universitat de València, Espagne) présentera en salle Jean-Paul Taris un séminaire en anglais intitulé « Land uses in the catchment area as a proxy to determine the ecological status in Mediterranean wetlands » ; l’accès est libre et sans inscription.
Résumé
Wetlands’ characteristics depend largely on the surrounding environment, as they have strong interactions with the geology, geomorphology, soil and climate of their catchment area. Therefore, any activity or change produced in the watershed can have direct repercussions on the waterbody, and the natural wetlands’ features can be modified, as accumulated organic matter, sediments or pollutants can be poured to the waterbodies through the runoff.
Mediterranean wetlands have been historically altered, being their basins highly modified, with changes in land uses to agriculture, livestock pastures, or urban uses. These changes in land uses, increased by human activities, are bringing about problems not only on the water pollution, but also on their entire ecological status.
The objective of the project was to study whether the land uses in the catchment area could be used as an approach to assess the ecological status of a wetland. Influences of human activities in the basin were analysed in order to see their relationship with the wetlands’ ecological status of several Mediterranean coastal lagoons. For that, specific algorithms that respond to the pressures exerted by land uses were created and combined with the values of the ecological status indicators, mostly working on those metrics established by European conservation Directives.
Preliminary results showed statistically significant correlations between the land uses and the ecological indicators. Therefore, the quantification of land use information provided a useful approach to estimate the pressures to which wetlands are subjected.
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