Fig 1.
The work schedule for select priority indicators.
The work schedule carried out for the selection of Priority indicators and its long-term monitoring program respects the following states: (1) search of published or unpublished information on the species, habitats, and biological communities present in the action scope; (2) classification of the components of biodiversity in candidates of species, habitats, and ecosystem disturbances; (3) establishment of and Relevant components catalogue of species, habitats, ecological processes and ecosystem disturbances employing the assessment with an Index of relevance, and make an ecological network to determine the Relevant components of the local ecological process; (4) creation of a Monitoring Catalogue of candidates; and (5) establishment of the Priority indicators by a quantitative Priority index.
Table 1.
The quantitative scoring ranges and the relevance index formula used in our multi-criteria analysis for the relevant candidates of species, habitats, and ecosystem disturbances.
Table 2.
Summary of the assessment parameters used to select the relevant candidates, the ecological level (species, habitat, or ecosystem disturbances), the valuation for the calculation of the relevance index, the parameter’s description, and the specific criterion to assess each of the parameters.
Fig 2.
Interactions between the monitoring candidates to elucidate ecological processes.
Diagram of the possible interactions that are established between the monitoring candidates, where highlight five main groups of organisms in the trophic network, the detritivores (green box), the primary producers, the primary and secondary consumers, and the predators. However, within these groups, interactions occur, even within the same species communities. On the other hand, this entire complex trophic network is conditioned by abiotic and anthropogenic external ecosystem disturbances (ecosystem disturbances; red box), such as climatology, perturbations, pollution, forest management, etc. Continuous lines denote direct relationships, while discontinuous lines describe diffused relationships often characteristic of opportunistic species.
Table 3.
Summary of the assessment parameters used to select the priority indicators by a quantitative priority index using five parameters with its specific criterion.
Fig 3.
Location of the pilot study area.
The geographic location of the Sant Lorenç del Munt i l’Obac Natural Park (white ring) in the nearby of the metropolitan area of Barcelona (black ring) in Catalonia (NE Iberian Peninsula) and its perimeter. Squares correspond to 100×100m Permanent Monitoring Plots, where COD correspond to Rocky areas habitat, MAT: Shrublands; PMD: Mediterranean pine forests, PHD: Wet pine forests; BMX: Mixed forests, AMY: Mountain holm oak forests, and BCF: Deciduous forests.
Table 4.
Reduction in the number and percentage of candidates to relevant components through the use of the relevance index; and reduction of the number and percentage of monitoring components to priority indicators by a quantitative priority index.
Table 5.
Priority indicators (n = 27) that quantitatively meet selection criteria on Sant Llorenç el Munt i l’Obac Natural Park.
The indicators are divided into four categories and in different attributes or pressures [1], consequently, each require different variables from monitoring candidates.