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Pablo Cipriotti

Ecological Modelling for Assessment of Sustainable Rangeland Management

Pablo was the Argentinean PhD student in the collaborative research project with the IFEVA- Dep. Ecología, Facultad de Agronomía (Universidad de Buenos Aires) on "The impact of landscape heterogeneity on grazing-induced degradation of Patagonian steppes". In 2008 he obtained a Georg Forster fellowship awarded from the Humbold Foundation to work with me in Leipzig.

 
Pablos main research interests are population and landscape ecology of semiarid ecosystems, with a focus on the influences of the major disturbances drought and grazing. He uses a combined approach of field experiments and modeling. In his PhD work he studies the dynamic of a shrub grass community in the semiarid steppe in Patagonia.

Durante los últimos 10 años Pablo ha trabajado en ecosistemas pastoriles semi-aridos de la Patagonia en el estudio de los efectos del pastoreo y las sequías sobre la estructura y la dinámica de poblaciones, principalmente en relación con las invasiones y el enriquecimiento de leñosas. Pablo ha empleado diferentes aproximaciones metodológicas desde la experimentación tradicional y estadística clásica, hasta análisis de patrones espaciales, técnicas geo-estadísticas, modelos de simulación basados en individuos y modelos demográficos matriciales de projección. Recientemente, Pablo esta ampliado su área de trabajo hacia regiones más húmedas, como los pastizales Fueguinos donde estudia un proceso de invasión reciente por una dicotiledónea herbácea junto con un grupo de investigadores del Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales, la Dirección de Recursos Naturales de Tierra del Fuego, el INTA y el SENASA.

Pablos Project:

According to the United Nations (UNEP, Agenda 21), degradation resulting from various factors, including non sustainable management, affects as much as 3.3 billion hectares of rangelands worldwide and reduce their ability to provide important ecosystem services. Because of the complexity of the problem and the large time and spatial scales involved, modelling approaches are required. However, a mismatch between the spatial scales at which processes of vegetation dynamics occur (m2 – ha) and at which range management occurs (tens of km²) has hindered a successful integration into ecological models to explore strategies for rangeland management. The main goal of his project is search for optimal grazing management strategies, which minimize the likelihood of natural resources degradation, balancing the conflicts between resource conservation and production. To do this, simulation modelling is ideally suited to solve conflicts between resource conservation and production because extensive simulation experiments analyzed with methods of risk assessments and multi-criteria decision analysis allow for testing a broad range of management strategies and systematic search for optimal strategies. To match the scales required for a rangeland assessment he will extract the detail relevant for the larger scale from small-scale and non-equilibrium simulation models. Then he will use the upscaled model developed to evaluate the ecological sustainability of grazing management alternatives.