Geoscience Reference
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negative appearance resulting from mismanagement over the last 50 years. However,
urban planners and designers should take into consideration the dynamic nature of
urban landscape values, which can change from their usual recreational use to a
depository for waste and debris. Today, educational initiatives lead by local civic
organizations, such as taking school children to 'discover' wetland areas, are aimed
at changing community values and attitudes toward wetlands by direct exposure to
these important habitats. Nevertheless, the impact of these initiatives need to be
monitored by long-term perception studies, in line with the LTSER- Chile strategy.
19.2
Working with the Wine Industry Towards Earth
Stewardship
Mediterranean Ecosystems, characterized by mild winters that concentrate rainy-
season and warm dry summers, are areas of great, but highly fragile, ecological value
(Myers et al.
2000
; Olson and Dinerstein
2008
). They host high diversity and ende-
mism rates of fl oras that exceed the combined rates of tropical Africa and Asia
(Arroyo and Cavieres
1991
; Cowling et al.
1996
). Geographically they include por-
tions of USA, Mexico, Chile, Australia, and South Africa, as well as the Mediterranean
Basin, and tend to be densely populated regions. The Chilean Mediterranean Region
extends between 23 and 39.5° South, and although it represents only 16 % of the
country's territory, it harbors almost 50 % of Chilean vascular plants, including 50 %
of endemic species (Arroyo et al.
1995
; Armesto et al.
2007a
,
b
).
Mediterranean areas around the globe historically have exhibited an intense
anthropogenic pressure due to agricultural and urban land uses, and globally have
less than 4.5 % under any conservation protection category (Cox and Underwood
2011
). Chile is not an exception, with 77 % of the population (INE
2011
) and 76 %
of the country's GDP (Banco Central
2012
), concentrated in its Mediterranean
region. Despite its ecological value and the threats to its biological integrity, less
than 1 % of the regional surface is under any offi cial protection (Underwood et al.
2009
). This has proven to be insuffi cient for biodiversity conservation (Simonetti
1999
; Tognelli et al.
2008
; Durán et al.
2013
). Two centuries of intensive deforesta-
tion, together with intensive grazing by cattle and extremely variable rainfall, have
had long-lasting effects on forest cover in south-central Chile, whose effects are
persistent even today (Armesto et al.
2010
). In addition, economic incentives to
forestry in the last two decades, together with economic globalization and free
trade, promoted the expansion of new crops, leading to the further decline of wood-
lands. One of these new crops are grapes for wine production.
The wine industry has expanded persistently in the Chilean Mediterranean region
with 63,550 hectares (ha) in 1997 to 128,367 in 2012 (202 % growth), and recently
expanding beyond the Mediterranean limits (MINAGRI
2013
, Fig.
19.2a
). The
image of Chile is very much associated with the wine industry. Most vineyards own
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