Water footprint and virtual water flows from the Global South: Foundations for sustainable agriculture in periods of drought.

Freshwater availability has decreased alarmingly worldwide, with agriculture playing a vital role in this trend. The assessment of the agricultural water footprint (WF) and virtual water flows (VWF) is fundamental not only in local water resources management and protection, but also in our understanding of the synergies between local water consumption and global markets. Thus, the WF - broken down into its components (blue, green, and gray) - of the leading 21 crops (grouped in fruit, legumes, cereals, and vegetables), grown in four basins with the most significant agricultural activity in central Chile was determined, estimated in two consecutive years 2017-2018.

Recent wildfires in Central Chile: Detecting links between burned areas and population exposure in the wildland urban interface.

Wildfires are gaining importance in the Mediterranean regions owing to climate change and landscape changes due to the increasing closeness between urban areas and forests prone to wildfires. We analysed the dry season wildfire occurrences in the Mediterranean region of Central Chile (32°S-39°30' S) between 2000 and 2017, using satellite images to detect burned areas, their landscape metrics and the land use and covers (vegetal) pre-wildfire, in order to determine the population living in areas that may be affected by wildfires. The existing regulations in western Mediterranean countries (Portugal, Spain, France, and Italy) were used to identify and define the wildland-urban interface (WUI) areas, quantifying the people inhabiting them and estimating the population affected by burned areas from 2001 to 2017.

Understanding agricultural water footprint variability to improve water management in Chile.

Understanding water consumption is crucial for sustainable management of water resources. Under climate change scenarios that project highly variable water availability, the need for public policies that assure efficiency and equity in water resources is increasing. This work analyzes the case of the Cachapoal River agricultural basin (34°S 71°W), which presents temperature increases and a precipitation deficit, with a drought period that began more than eleven years ago having significantly decreased water availability.

Human-environmental drivers and impacts of the globally extreme 2017 Chilean fires.

In January 2017, hundreds of fires in Mediterranean Chile burnt more than 5000 km, an area nearly 14 times the 40-year mean. We contextualize these fires in terms of estimates of global fire intensity using MODIS satellite record, and provide an overview of the climatic factors and recent changes in land use that led to the active fire season and estimate the impact of fire emissions to human health. The primary fire activity in late January coincided with extreme fire weather conditions including all-time (1979-2017) daily records for the Fire Weather Index (FWI) and maximum temperature, producing some of the most energetically intense fire events on Earth in the last 15-years.

Megafires in Chile 2017: Monitoring multiscale environmental impacts of burned ecosystems.

During the summer of 2017, several megafires in South-Central Chile burned down forest plantations, native forests, shrublands and human settlements. National authorities identified the relevant effects of the wildfires on infrastructure and ecosystems. However, other indirect effects such as the risk of flooding or, increased air pollution were not assessed.

Monitoring the effects of land cover change on the supply of ecosystem services in an urban region: A study of Santiago-Valparaíso, Chile.

Mankind's quest for well-being results in continuous pressure to transform landscapes, with said transformation driven by land use changes, urbanization, production activity, and protective measures in addition to climate variability and other environmental drivers. The relationship between anthropogenic landscape changes and the provision of ecosystem services (ES) is a topic of increasing interest in Latin America. In Chile, land cover changes due to increased urbanization and forestry, and expansion of agricultural land, in addition to conservation initiatives as a part of land planning, have been intensive in the last few decades.

A Heat Vulnerability Index: Spatial Patterns of Exposure, Sensitivity and Adaptive Capacity for Santiago de Chile.

Climate change will worsen the high levels of urban vulnerability in Latin American cities due to specific environmental stressors. Some impacts of climate change, such as high temperatures in urban environments, have not yet been addressed through adaptation strategies, which are based on poorly supported data. These impacts remain outside the scope of urban planning.