Strategies For Ecological Management for Campo San Francisco, Chile

CONCLUSION The strategies for ecological management presented in this guide are categorized according to landscape patterns. However, after a thorough analysis of regional and on-site landscape patterns, an overarching group of strategies emerged. The emergence of these strategies demonstrates the connections between the systems at Campo San Francisco. If these overarching strategies are integrated into Alto Cauquenes’ management decisions, the landscape’s resilience to natural and anthropogenic disturbances will increase. This will ensure the lasting health and vitality of the land at Campo San Francisco.

Overarching Strategies: • Diversify management practices and number of species: Diversity enhances resilience in the face of climatic shocks, disease and pest outbreaks and variability in the returns from sale of a range of crops.

• Increase resource use efficiency: Make precise applications of water and other external inputs in both space and time to minimize waste and other problems that arise from overapplication.

• Allow natural processes to take management precedent whenever possible: Aim for biological solutions, and diverse management strategies that mirror the diversity of the biophysical characteristics on-site.

Manage pests by monitoring them, and encouraging the presence of their natural enemies, rather than seeking to eliminate pests.

• Increase soil health: Shift from nutrient management based on fertilizer application to processes such as biological nitrogen fixation, crop rotation and nutrient recycling, and incorporate the use of manure and compost.

• Manage for adaptive dynamism: Constant monitoring and experimentation is critical to adaptive and dynamic management.