The Vilcabamba-Amboro Conservation Corridor (VACC) is located in the tropical Andes, extending from the lowland humid forest ecosystems through the cloud forest to alpine grassland and scrublands. It is considered a hotspot of biodiversity, with record numbers of plants, butterflies, and birds. Although the corridor and its surroundings have low population density, the area is currently threatened by the expansion of the agricultural frontier and by extractive oil and mining activities. Because of the high threat posed by humans, maintaining the connectivity of this protected areas corridor is essential to guarantee the movement of species, gene flow, and metapopulation dynamics. This work evaluates forest morphology changes over 16 years across the corridor and relates them to impacts on species movements through a model based on circuit theory, with the objective of identifying potential conservation areas.
Speaker
Dr. Florencia Sangermano
Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Geography
Clark University
Dr. Florencia Sangermano is a geographer specializing in conservation applications of geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, and landscape ecology. Her research focuses on climate and land cover change impacts on ecosystems and biodiversity through the lens of geospatial analysis, with the objective of supporting conservation planning and ecosystem management. Before joining Clark University as an Assistant Professor, Florencia worked at Clark Labs developing methods to facilitate the analysis of land cover change, as well as for the analysis of time series of satellite Earth observations. She has given capacity building and training workshops to support conservation applications of spatial analysis and remote sensing in North America, South America, and Europe. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Geography from Clark University and a B.Sc./M.Sc. in Biology from Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Argentina.