Habitat quality standards

[Ramon Diaz]

Dear all,

One of the main outcomes of the project Life in Common Land is testing the feasibility of Results-based Payments y wet heathland and bogs habitats. In this regard, good (or bad) conservation state of different habitats must be assessed by means of simple and direct indicators. These indicators should be easily checked and put into practice by land owners, administration staff and other people involved in the project.

This topic means to be a forum for discussion on conservation standards definition and how to score them. I hope that some of the materials to be uploaded here (I am still getting familiar with operational issues on the page, so it will take some time ) will trigger a fruitful interchange of opinions and knowledge.

Just as a starter, find below a picture on one of our wet heathlands we think it might be a bit overgrazed (at least locally) as scrub cover is less than 10-20 %... Any comment?

[Heath1][https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JASVhD ... sp=sharing]

Cheers!!!

[Ramon Diaz]

Dear all,
Burning and cutting wet heaths are some of the specific conservation actions of the project. Such management is meant to be used in case of risk of encroachment of the habitat.
In some of the communities where we are working with, the owners have already made prescribed burns in recent years in these habitats, in areas less than 10 hectares.
In the attached file we present some images of burns carried out in the last three years. Each slide corresponds to one year and contains the orthophoto (June 2017) of the burned area, results of the NBR (Normalized Burn Ratio) and dNBR (delta Normalized Burn Ratio) indexes through SENTINEL 2A images, and current field photographs.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1N7w5i ... UhfgCDVu6p

Comments?
Thank you
Cheers

[Ramon Diaz]

Dear all,

Please find attached a draft (in english) of one of the dossiers to land owners with a brief guide for habitat quality assessment.
The idea of the document is providing to the farmers with visual and simple criteria for self-assessment of the conservation status of the habitats. Eventually it will give an indication of the potential scores of the habitats for their evaluation in conservation results-based schemes.

Hope you enjoy it !

https://nubeusc-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/g ... Q?e=LdPWtZ

Cheers!!!