Cristina Acosta-Muñoz

The global decline in biodiversity, mainly caused by human activities such as land use change, agricultural intensification, habitat degradation, and climate change, is impacting many species, including raptors. The lesser kestrel (Falco naumanni), a threatened colonial raptor strongly associated with traditional agricultural landscapes, has experienced marked distributional and demographic changes across Spain. Understanding the environmental and anthropogenic factors shaping its occurrence is essential for guiding effective conservation actions. In this study, we combined national-scale presence data with local breeding information to identify the main drivers influencing the species’ spatial patterns and potential causes of local population change. Nationally, the lesser kestrel showed positive associations with prey availability, grasslands, and non-irrigated croplands, while urban areas, water bodies, and higher altitudes negatively affected its occurrence. Climatic variables, particularly precipitation during the warmest quarter and temperature seasonality, were also significant predictors. At the local scale (Córdoba province), colony abundance increased in non-irrigated agricultural areas and certain human-modified habitats, but declined in woodlands, open natural areas, and landscapes characterised by larger patch sizes. Overall, our findings highlight the relevance of preserving heterogeneous, traditional agricultural mosaics and maintaining prey-rich open habitats. By integrating national and local perspectives, this study identifies priority areas for conservation and provides actionable insights to support efforts aimed at halting the decline of the lesser kestrel in Spain.

Forest health is an attractive concept in forestry research, which environmental, social, and political interests have shaped. Assessing forest health is crucial, but finding a single definition of the concept is complex. It is determined by the aim of the forest study, different areas of knowledge, scales of work, technology, methodologies, the historical moment, or the source of funding, among others. With almost a century of scientific evidence, the aim is to identify and contextualise temporal changes in the relevance of this key concept. Trends are analysed through the construction of three main descriptors (state variables, drivers, and methods) and the main conceptual subdomains (themes). This review reveals the significant geographical bias driven by diverse needs and interests. Methodologies have evolved from traditional inventories to the use of advanced tools such as remote sensing or ecophysiology, improving forest characterisation at both global and individual scales. Research has evolved from unicausality towards holistic and multidisciplinary approaches, influencing research to date and future scenarios. We identified key knowledge gaps in the scientific literature, particularly the concepts of ecosystem services, Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) and the concept of “one health”. These findings highlight the need for a research assessment, future directions, and scenarios for forest health research.

Forests provide key ecosystem services to human society, and the ability to provide these services depends on their overall health. Forest health is an attractive and interesting concept in forestry research, which environmental, social and political interests have shaped. Assessing forest health is crucial, but finding a single definition of the concept is complex. It is determined by the aim of the forest study, different areas of knowledge, scales of work, technology, methodologies, historical moment or source of funding, among others. With almost a century of scientific evidence, the aim is to identify and contextualise temporal changes in the relevance of this key concept. Trends are analysed through the construction of three main descriptors (state variables, drivers and methods) and the main conceptual subdomains (themes). This review reveals the significant geographical bias in the research, which the Global North predominantly conducts. We observe the evolution of forest health research driven by diverse needs and interests, ranging from air pollution to the multifaceted impacts of climate change. Methodologies applied in this field have also evolved from traditional crown condition inventories to the use of advanced tools such as remote sensing or ecophysiology, improving the characterisation of forest health patterns at both global and individual scales. Forest health research has evolved towards more holistic and multidisciplinary approaches, reflected in the broadening and integration of methodologies and technologies, influenced by historical context, which influence what is being researched today and future scenarios. We identified key knowledge gaps in the scientific literature, in particular the concepts of ecosystem services, Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) and the concept of ‘One Health’. These findings highlight the need for future research to incorporate these critical but often overlooked areas, potentially reshaping future directions and scenarios for forest health research.

Biodiversity conservation is a complex and transdisciplinary problem that requires engagement and cooperation among scientific, societal, economic, and political institutions. However, historical approaches have often failed to bring together and address the needs of all relevant stakeholders in decision‐making processes. The Tropical Andes, a biodiversity hotspot where conservation efforts often conflict with socioeconomic issues and policies that prioritize economic development, provides an ideal model to develop and implement more effective approaches. In this study, we present a co‐design approach that mainstreams and improves the flow of biodiversity information in the Tropical Andes, while creating tailored outputs that meet the needs of economic and societal stakeholders. We employed a consultative process that brought together biodiversity information users and producers at the local, national, and regional levels through a combination of surveys and workshops. This approach identified priority needs and limitations of the flow of biodiversity information in the region, which led to the co‐design of user‐relevant biodiversity indicators. By leveraging the existing capacities of biodiversity information users and producers, we were able to co‐design multiple biodiversity indicators and prioritize two for full implementation ensuring that the data was findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable based on the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) principles. This approach helped address limitations that were identified in the stakeholder engagement process, including gaps in data availability and the need for more accessible biodiversity information. Additionally, capacity‐building workshops were incorporated for all producers of biodiversity information involved, which aimed to not only improve the current flow of biodiversity information in the region but also facilitate its future sustainability. Our approach can serve as a valuable blueprint for mainstreaming biodiversity information and making it more inclusive in the future, especially considering the diverse worldviews, values, and knowledge systems between science, policy, and practice.

Documenting temporal trends in the extent of ecosystems is essential to monitoring their status but combining this information with the degree of protection helps us assess the effectiveness of societal actions for conserving ecosystem diversity and related ecosystem services. We demonstrated indicators in the Tropical Andes using both potential (pre-industrial) and recent (~2010) distribution maps of terrestrial ecosystem types. We measured long-term ecosystem loss, representation of ecosystem types within the current protected areas, quantifying the additional representation offered by protecting Key Biodiversity Areas. Six (4.8%) ecosystem types (i.e., measured as 126 distinct vegetation macrogroups) have lost >50% in extent across four Andean countries since pre-industrial times. For ecosystem type representation within protected areas, regarding the pre-industrial extent of each type, a total of 32 types (25%) had higher representation (>30%) than the post-2020 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) draft target in existing protected areas. Just 5 of 95 types (5.2%) within the montane Tropical Andes hotspot are currently represented with >30% within the protected areas. Thirty-nine types (31%) within these countries could cross the 30% CBD 2030 target with the addition of Key Biodiversity Areas. This indicator is based on the Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBV) and responds directly to the needs expressed by the users of these countries.

Eucalyptus grandis and E. dunnii have high productive potential in the South of Brazil, Uruguay, and central Argentina. This is based on the similarity of the climate and soil of these areas, which form an eco-region called Campos. However, previous results show that these species have differences in their distribution caused by the prioritization of Uruguayan soils for forestry, explained by the particular conditions of each site. In this study, the site variables (climate, soil, and topography) that better explain the distribution of both species were identified, and prediction models of current and future distribution were adjusted for different climate change scenarios (years 2050 and 2070). The distribution of E. grandis was associated with soil parameters, whereas for E. dunnii a greater effect of the climatic variables was observed. The ensemble biomod2 model was the most precise with regard to predicting the habitat for both species with respect to the simple models evaluated. For E. dunnii, the average values of the AUC, Kappa, and TSS index were 0.98, 0.88, and 0.77, respectively. For E. grandis, their values were 0.97, 0.86, and 0.80, respectively. In the projections of climatic change, the distribution of E. grandis occurrence remains practically unchanged, even in the scenarios of temperature increase. However, current distribution of E. dunnii shows high susceptibility in a scenario of increased temperature, to the point that most of the area currently planted may be at risk. Our results might be useful to political government and foresters for decision making in terms of future planted areas.

This study used Landsat temporal series to describe defoliation levels due to the Pine Processionary Moth (PPM) in Pinus forests of southeastern Andalusia (Spain), utilizing Google Earth Engine. A combination of remotely sensed data and field survey data was used to detect the defoliation levels of different Pinus spp. and the main environmental drivers of the defoliation due to the PPM. Four vegetation indexes were also calculated for remote sensing defoliation assessment, both inside the stand and in a 60-m buffer area. In the area of study, all Pinus species are affected by defoliation due to the PPM, with a cyclic behavior that has been increasing in frequency in recent years. Defoliation levels were practically equal for all species, with a high increase in defoliation levels 2 and 3 since 2014. The Moisture Stress Index (MSI) and Normalized Difference Infrared Index (NDII) exhibited similar overall (p < 0.001) accuracy in the assessment of defoliation due to the PPM. The synchronization of NDII-defoliation data had a similar pattern for all together and individual Pinus species, showing the ability of this index to adjust the model parameters based on the characteristics of specific defoliation levels. Using Landsat-based NDII-defoliation maps and interpolated environmental data, we have shown that the PPM defoliation in southeastern Spain is driven by the minimum temperature in February and the precipitation in June, March, September, and October. Therefore, the NDII-defoliation assessment seems to be a general index that can be applied to forests in other areas. The trends of NDII-defoliation related to environmental variables showed the importance of summer drought stress in the expansion of the PPM on Mediterranean Pinus species. Our results confirm the potential of Landsat time-series data in the assessment of PPM defoliation and the spatiotemporal patterns of the PPM; hence, these data are a powerful tool that can be used to develop a fully operational system for the monitoring of insect damage.

En este artículo de investigación científica se da a conocer a la comunidad interesada en el procesamiento digital de imágenes, una aplicación inédita de la transformada de Radon para segmentar imágenes en escala de grises, lo que permite la identificación y clasificación de regiones u objetos, misma que puede extenderse a imágenes en color. Los resultados obtenidos se compararon con los resultados de dos algoritmos clásicos de segmentación: el algoritmo de umbralización Otsu optimizado, y el algoritmo de crecimiento de regiones Seeded Region Growing.