Planning and design of the Metropolitan Region of Buenos Aires through the promotion of ecological services and the integration of ecological resources

Abstract

Metropolitan Region of Buenos Aires (RMBA) planning through ecosystem services (ES) perspective allows the evaluation of the environmental, social and economic subsystem in the same set of priorities. The objective was to use the ES provided by the uses (extensive and intensive agriculture: AE and AI, urban and peri-urban agriculture: AUP, Green areas: AV and urbanisation: URB) in the context of strategic landscape planning and network design ecological (RE). The planning and design stages included socio economic-productive factors and landscape metrics that allowed evaluating and prioritising uses that improved the conservation of ES, socioeconomic-productive factors and the landscape matrix. In the RMBA, economic criteria predominate with greater productive and industrial uses in the most urbanised municipalities. The proposed changes increased AV and AUP uses, which decreased the pressure on urban SEs. An RE is proposed with a greater number of corridors and patches of uses with a larger surface area. In the future, planning should include monitoring of the socio-ecological system at different scales, by combining the different alternatives of the proposed analysis that allows long-term sustainable use.