Identificación de los ecosistemas estratégicos del municipio La Calera

Abstract

This study focuses on the recognition of strategic ecosystems that are located in the municipality of La Calera in Cundinamarca, which is composed by several natural environments that should be categorised, ranked, valued and assessed to identify the current status, potential and dependence of communities on ecosystems. The importance of this project lies in the usefulness that it bring for the community to establish the priorities of the ecosystems, the value, the sustainable management and the need of the conservation, taking into account that the environmental problems have increased by the extensive projects of urbanization in the municipality, as well as the contamination of the aquifer bodies by the pasteurizing and cement industries.

Based on the “Plan de Ordenamiento Territorial” (POT, 2010), the environmental agenda of the municipality and this study set out the following ecosystems: high-Andean forest, agro-ecosystems, wasteland, sub-wasteland, wetland, urban and industrial areas. However currently these ecosystems have undergone to various changes and to the implementation of secondary forests that disturb the physicochemical properties of the soil and the conditions of the ecosystems, as well as the increase of livestock and agriculture activities.

To classify the strategic ecosystems the qualitative and quantitative methodologies were applied to establish the most important ecosystem services for each sampling point.

Finally we looked the valuation of strategic ecosystems by categories of ecological importance, making an interpretation of the ecosystem matrix, obtaining as a result that the strategic ecosystems are high-Andean forest, páramo and the hydric ecosystem, related to the Teusacá River, Rio Blanco, Chingaza National Natural Park and the San Rafael Reservoir