Scattered trees in farms in eastern Cundinamarca and their contribution to the connectivity of the landscape

Abstract

The design, implementation and management of productive agricultural systems that consider the incorporation of the tree component as a strategic axis to safeguard the ecosystem diversity in the regions, is vital when you want to preserve local biodiversity and recover the ecological connectivity of forest fragments in the watersheds. hydrographic. The heterogeneity of the landscape, the diversity of crops in agricultural production systems and the analysis of scattered trees in productive rural farms, are part of the constitutive aspects for the study of connectivity at local and regional scale, managing to determine, the changes in the vegetation cover, the provision of genetic material and even establishing local points for ecosystem restoration actions. This research studied the land cover of 32 farms located in the municipalities of Chipaque, Cáqueza, Quetame and Guayabetal, in eastern Cundinamarca and analyzed the connectivity indicators generated by the remaining trees in order to establish indicators that allow in the future optimize reforestation processes. 8 properties were selected for each of the municipalities. The information was collected directly in the field from measurements of areas, covers and floristic inventories from farm to farm. To facilitate the analysis of the information, the software fragstats version 4.2.1 was used. The study shows that in some cases the most abundant covers correspond to pastures, but that in other cases there are important patches of forest that can be taken into account to guide more efficiently the reforestation processes in the future.