Abstract

Biosphere Reserves are areas of global interest that also provide an opportunity to improve the protection of terrestrial and marine ecosystems on a national scale. In this chapter, we used the concept of vegetation belts as a definition of ecosystems, and we calculated their state of protection through an indicator of ecosystem representativity in Chilean Biosphere Reserves. The ecosystems represented in Biosphere Reserves currently correspond to 45% of the terrestrial ecosystems with highly variable intensities; in many cases the degree of protection does not exceed 10% of the vegetation belt area. These results show that the Biosphere Reserve that currently represents the greatest diversity of ecosystems is the Biosphere Reserve Bosques Templados with 19 vegetation belts. The Biosphere Reserve that protects the fewest ecosystems is Fray Jorge, with a representation of only three vegetation belts.