THE CABAH-XIIK-CYTED-CNPq NET, BIOTIC CONTROLS OF WETLAND VEGETATION: CORPORATION AND IDENTIFICATION OF METHODS AND TECHNIQUES APPLICATIONS ON SPACING AND MONITORING OF VEGETATION UNITS.

Abstract

The ecological importance of the wetlands, its diversity and fragility, has produced responses for conservation of the society to local, regional, national and international levels. Nevertheless, the research focused mainly on the ecology and biodiversity of wetlands and plans of management. Little is known about the interactions between the abiotic controls that regulate the functioning of vegetation units and on the habitats that support complex mosaics of aquatic ecosystems. It was demonstrated that landforms generated during the late Pleistocene and Holocene, control the distribution environmental patterns and that climatic changes affected the distribution of vegetation units (morpho -vegetation units) and produced mechanisms of speciation. The main objective of the CABAH-XIIK network, supported by CYTED (Program of Cooperation between Ibero-American countries) and CNPq (National Council of Research, Brazil) is to meet researchers from Latin-America and Spain which have experience in mapping of vegetation units, on the understanding of biogeographic patterns and that had made research on palaeoecology, palaeogeography, water resources and techniques of remote sensing. In this way, was possible to compare methods, techniques and results on abiotic controls on wetlands and is being possible to identify applied indicators. This will permit to propose monitoring techniques of low cost and the determination of environmental quality parameters in wetlands.