The Natural Capital Approach to Landscape Planning: a Pilot Project in Colchagua Valley, builds upon long-standing work undertaken by Wine, Climate Change and Biodiversity Programme and partner vineyards since 2008. The project draws upon the natural capital work that JNCC has undertaken both within the UK and the UK's Overseas Territories.
Project introduction
This pilot project sought to demonstrate how high-resolution Earth Observation data, ecosystem modelling and local ecological knowledge can be combined to inform ecosystem-based management.
The project combines industry knowledge with ecosystem sciences and looks to disentangle and quantify the interactions between land management, biotic and abiotic factors, and the effects on ecosystem services that are relevant to wine-producing businesses.
Through a series of discussions and workshops, stakeholders identified the following ecosystem services as most relevant to wine production: natural biocontrol of pest species; biodiversity; aesthetic appeal; prevention of fire spread; reduction in topsoil loss; and water supply and water quality regulation. To bring these ecosystem services into a quantifiable format a series of models and maps have been developed to demonstrate the types of management tools. These include:
- Land cover map of the Colchagua Valley using Copernicus Sentinel data.
- Development of a probabilistic Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) that demonstrates how management practices impact upon ecosystem service delivery.
- A series of models that are interconnected through the BBN that assess and visually display: soil erosion, water supply, water quality, fire risk, and water stress under future climate change scenarios.
- Viticulture ImplemeNting Ecosystem Services (VINES) application that enables land managers to easily interrogate modelled outputs and produce visual outputs that signify how management measures affect ecosystem service.
- Ecosystem service mapper.
Ecosystem service mapper
An interactive mapper allows you to explore the area, habitat map, and some of the ecosystem service delivery maps which were produced as part of this project.
VINES app
The VINES app allows each of the stakeholders to check the ecosystem service delivery within their individual fields. Try changing the management options to see how different decisions may impact the level of service delivery both now and in the future.
Project partners
Through the South Atlantic Research Outreach Programme, JNCC has collaborated with The Wine, Climate Change and Biodiversity Program (Programa Vino, Cambio Climático y Biodiversidad [VCCB]), which is a scientific initiative of the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity (Instituto de Ecologia y Biodiversidad [IEB]), and the University Austral of Chile (Universidad Austral de Chile [UACh]).
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