Satellite-based monitoring of primary production in a mediterranean islet post black rat eradication
Ibañez-Álvarez, Miguel (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Ciència Animal i dels Aliments)
Santasusana, Pol (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Medicina i Cirurgia Animals)
Calleja, Juan Antonio (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Centro de Investigación en Biodiversidad y Cambio Global)
Rouco, Carlos (Universidad de Córdoba. Departamento de Botánica, Ecología y Fisiología Vegetal)
Brolly, Matthew (University of Brighton. Centre for Earth Observation Sciences)
Burnside, Niall (University of Brighton. Centre for Earth Observation Sciences)
Baraza Ruíz, Elena (Universitat de les Illes Balears. Departament de Biologia)
Bartolomé, Jordi (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Ciència Animal i dels Aliments)
Serrano Ferron, Emmanuel (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Medicina i Cirurgia Animals)

Data:	2022
Resum:	Invasive rodents have a detrimental impact on terrestrial ecosystem functioning, this is often exacerbated on small islands. Rat eradication campaigns are often used to deal with this environmental perturbation given their classification as invasive species. Studies assessing the effects of rodent control at ecosystem scale are scarce and thus little is known about the subsequent functional response of vegetation subsequent to rat control. In this work, we use remote sensing to assess the effects of black rat (Rattus rattus) eradication on Mediterranean vegetation productivity in the Sa Dragonera Islet, Mallorca (Spain). Rats feed on seeds, sprouts, and leaves of woody vegetation and hence we expect primary production to increase nine years after the rodenticide campaign. The Break Detection approach for additive season and trend (BFAST method) was adopted to examine changes in vegetation density before and after the eradication campaign in Sa Dragonera Islet (Balearic Islands), using a temporal series of monthly NDVI data extracted from Landsat imagery. The same temporal trends were examined for a control zone where no rat eradication took place, in order to control for weather-driven changes. The results of this study revealed changes across the 21-year monthly NDVI time series. However, the dates, magnitude, and trend of these changes could not be explicitly attributed to the action of rats, when compared to the historical changes on the islet and the changes found to co-occur within the control zone. These finding could, perhaps, be explained by the high resilience of Mediterranean shrubs to browsing including that of rat invasion. However, the results from the study appear to show that rat damage on specific plant species, with little contribution to global NDVI values, would be overshadowed by the effects of broader environmental factors in this remote sensing approach. The results suggest that the current passive restoration scheme imposed following eradication is not sufficient for effective ecosystem restoration.
Ajuts:	Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación RTI2018-094202-A-C22 Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación RTI2018-094202-BC21 Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad RYC-2016-21120 Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad CGL2015-70449-R/BES-2016
Drets:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Llengua:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Matèria:	BFAST method ; Invasive species ; Landsat Time Series ; Rodent eradication
Publicat a:	Remote sensing (Basel), Vol. 14 Núm. 1 (1-1 2022) , p. 101, ISSN 2072-4292

DOI: 10.3390/rs14010101

18 p, 4.1 MB

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