Conservation assessments of Văcărești urban wetland in Bucharest (Romania) : land cover and climate changes from 2000 to 2015

Abstract: Văcărești Urban Wetland, a recently instituted nature park, is situated in Bucharest (Romania). It has been established over the last 27 years within an abandoned retention polder, built during the communist era. Although the area has been disregarded since the construction of the polder ceased, the importance of the Văcărești ecosystem was recently acknowledged by various international associations, due to its great biological diversity and presence of protected species. The aim of this research is to analyse how land cover has changed over the last decade, and to assess if climate change has influenced the habitats of species and therefore biodiversity. The present study focuses on the Văcărești Wetland during the time interval 2000-2015. Satellite images have been used to estimate the percentage cover of six Land Cover Types (LCTs): bare soil, water bodies, water species, reed beds, open land and woody species. Climate variables, i.e. temperature and precipitation, have been collated from the European Climate Assessment and Dataset and used to document the main trends in temperature and precipitation of the study area since 2000. These climate data have also been used as explanatory variables to run Redundancy Analyses (RDA) to assess the LCT variation explained by each of those explanatory variables. Further, lists of plants, birds, insects and other animals have been synthetized based on the Substantiation Note that pursues the implementation of Văcărești Nature Park’s protection regime in order to link each LCT to the diversity of species. Note that the lists of species are available for the present only. The analysis indicated that temperature and precipitation specifically influence the water-related land cover types, which include water bodies, water species and reed beds. The reed LCT recorded a major increase throughout the studied period. Given that the presence of species depends on their specific physiological requirements, and therefore the availability of their respective habitats, I found that hydrophilic plants recorded an increase throughout the studied period. As local temperature and precipitation displayed an increasing trend between 2000 and 2015, it is assumed that the species that depend on the hydrophilic plants would also increase in the future. The results of this study could provide complementary support for the implementation of wetland conservation strategies. These strategies have the purpose of protecting the resources of the ecosystem and potentially enhance the species diversity of Văcărești Wetland.