Bases para el conocimiento para contribuir al fortalecimiento y consolidación del corredor biológico Las Morochas; Guanacaste, Costa Rica

Abstract

Fragmentation and degradation have led to changes in natural environments, which have brought the loss of biodiversity and sustainability of our natural resources. Therefore, alarming reactions have taken place globally; due to the speediness by which these changes are taking place; so, some conservation strategies have been developed and implemented to revert the loss of biodiversity. One of strategy to mitigate the negative effects is the design of biological corridors, which serve as means of connectivity between fragmented forest ecosystems to help the flow of flora and fauna among isolated populations. This study collected secondary information to characterize the natural capital of the Biological Corridor Las Morocochas. The information collected was: geomorphology, soils, topography, hydrology, land use capacity, life zones, climate, flora and fauna. Besides, it was carried out a supervised classification of land use with ASTER-14 images. With this analysis it was obtained that 78% of the corridor have a mosaic of agricultural uses and 37.15 % of fragmented forest. A connectivity diagnosis was done to assess the degree of fragmentation and to identify the causes that disrupt forest connectivity. According to the results of the calculated metrics; the fragmentation index for this corridor is of 0.07 which indicated that it is highly fragmented and that pasture land is the may cause that alters forest connectivity. Finally, an exploratory survey was conducted to study the social and productive aspects of associate with communities bordering the. It was concluded that the main productive activities in the area are: extensive grazing, subsistence agriculture and tourism. It was also found that 15% of the study area received the benefits from the Program for Environmental Services (PES)