- Forest structure and regeneration, Forest dynamics, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Amazonia, Taxonomy, Floristics, and 66 moreBiodiversity, Ethnobotany, Conservation Biology, Endemic Plants, Climate Change, medicinal & Aromatic plants, Threatened Plants, Anthropology, Social Sciences, Geography, Environmental Sustainability, Bamboo, Landscape Ecology, Landscape and Land-use-history, Vegetation Ecology, Biodiversity Research, Traditional Knowledge, Forest Ecology, Ethnoecology, Tropical forest, Botany, FOOD AND BEVERAGES, Diversity, Food and Beverage, Wild/Indigenous & Traditional Food Plants, Biomass, Traditional Knowledge and Ethnobiology, Alcoholic Beverages, Forest Fragmentation, Ecology, Ethnobiology, Tropical Ecology, Anthropology of Food, Ethnology, Livelihood, Crop Origins and Dispersals, Land-use/ Land-cover Change, Plant Ecology, Historical Ecology, Manejo De Recursos Naturales, Economic botany, Conocimientos Tradicionales, Amazonian Ethnology, Conservation, Cultural Ecology, Amazonian Archaeology, South American Archaeology, Biodiversidad, Paleoethnobotany, Biodiversity Conservation, Non Timber Forest Products (NTFP), Etnobotánica, Biocultural Diversity, Tropical Fruits, Conservation Ecology, Arqueologia Brasileira (Brazilian Archeology), Phytosociology, Ethnobotany in South America, Biodiversity Hotspots, Endemism, Protected areas, Landscape, Species Richness, Plant Community Ecology, ECONOMIC BOTANY AND PHARMACOGNOSY. Department of Botany, and Quaternary palaeoclimate and tectonicsedit
Research Interests: Geography, Climate Change, Diversity, Ecology, Amazonia, and 15 moreGlobal Change Biology, Medicine, Biological Sciences, Functional Traits, Biodiversity Conservation, Growth, Environmental Sciences, Tropical forest, Carbon Storage, Amazon rainforest, Science Technology, Tropical forests, Temporal Trends, Neotropical Forest, and tree communities
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Species distribution models (SDMs) are widely used in ecology and conservation. Presence-only SDMs such as MaxEnt frequently use natural history collections (NHCs) as occurrence data, given their huge numbers and accessibility. NHCs are... more
Species distribution models (SDMs) are widely used in ecology and conservation. Presence-only SDMs such as MaxEnt frequently use natural history collections (NHCs) as occurrence data, given their huge numbers and accessibility. NHCs are often spatially biased which may generate inaccuracies in SDMs. Here, we test how the distribution of NHCs and MaxEnt predictions relates to a spatial abundance model, based on a large plot dataset for Amazonian tree species, using inverse distance weighting (IDW). We also propose a new pipeline to deal with inconsistencies in NHCs and to limit the area of occupancy of the species. We found a significant but weak positive relationship between the distribution of NHCs and IDW for 66% of the species. The relationship between SDMs and IDW was also significant but weakly positive for 95% of the species, and sensitivity for both analyses was high. Furthermore, the pipeline removed half of the NHCs records. Presence-only SDM applications should consider th...
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Tropical forests are global centres of biodiversity and carbon storage. Many tropical countries aspire to protect forest to fulfil biodiversity and climate mitigation policy targets, but the conservation strategies needed to achieve these... more
Tropical forests are global centres of biodiversity and carbon storage. Many tropical countries aspire to protect forest to fulfil biodiversity and climate mitigation policy targets, but the conservation strategies needed to achieve these two functions depend critically on the tropical forest tree diversity-carbon storage relationship. Assessing this relationship is challenging due to the scarcity of inventories where carbon stocks in aboveground biomass and species identifications have been simultaneously and robustly quantified. Here, we compile a unique pan-tropical dataset of 360 plots located in structurally intact old-growth closed-canopy forest, surveyed using standardised methods, allowing a multi-scale evaluation of diversity-carbon relationships in tropical forests. Diversity-carbon relationships among all plots at 1 ha scale across the tropics are absent, and within continents are either weak (Asia) or absent (Amazonia, Africa). A weak positive relationship is detectable ...
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Lineages tend to retain ecological characteristics of their ancestors through time. However, for some traits, selection during evolutionary history may have also played a role in determining trait values. To address the relative... more
Lineages tend to retain ecological characteristics of their ancestors through time. However, for some traits, selection during evolutionary history may have also played a role in determining trait values. To address the relative importance of these processes requires large-scale quantification of traits and evolutionary relationships among species. The Amazonian tree flora comprises a high diversity of angiosperm lineages and species with widely differing life-history characteristics, providing an excellent system to investigate the combined influences of evolutionary heritage and selection in determining trait variation. We used trait data related to the major axes of life-history variation among tropical trees (e.g. growth and mortality rates) from 577 inventory plots in closed-canopy forest, mapped onto a phylogenetic hypothesis spanning more than 300 genera including all major angiosperm clades to test for evolutionary constraints on traits. We found significant phylogenetic sig...
Research Interests: Evolutionary Biology, Geography, Community Ecology, Biomass, Biology, and 15 moreLife Sciences, Productivity, Ecology, Biological Sciences, Functional Traits, Phylogeny, Growth, Forests, Plant sciences, Biological evolution, Divergent Selection, Phylogenetic Signal, Amazon rainforest, Convergent Evolution, and Medical and Health Sciences
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Analyses of forest loss and protected areas suggest that 36 to 57% of Amazonian tree flora may qualify as “globally threatened.”
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We show that in a bamboo-dominated forest in Southwestern Amazonia the tree mortality rate does not differ between the forest edge and the interior, even though bamboo abundance is higher closer to the edge. We tested whether bamboo... more
We show that in a bamboo-dominated forest in Southwestern Amazonia the tree mortality rate does not differ between the forest edge and the interior, even though bamboo abundance is higher closer to the edge. We tested whether bamboo abundance affects mortality rate in three areas within a forest fragment of ca. 1,166 ha. We estimated mortality rate for trees with > 10 cm dbh during 1.8 years. Bamboo abundance was approximately three times higher on the edge (3394 ± 1121 culms ha-1) than in the interior of the forest (1123 ± 754 stems ha-1). The annual mortality rate did not differ significantly between edge (3.8 ± 2.6 % y-1) and interior (3.6 ± 2.6 % y-1), but the main modes of tree mortality, 'dead standing' and 'broken,' differed significantly between edge and interior. Tree mortality was higher for smaller trees (10-30 dbh) and did not differ between forest edge and interior. However, bamboo abundance explained 23% of tree mortality rate at the edge, even thoug...
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Vascular epiphytes are common in tropical forests and represent a considerable part of the biodiversity in Southwestern Amazonia. The aim of this study was to determine the floristic composition, patterns of species richness, and... more
Vascular epiphytes are common in tropical forests and represent a considerable part of the biodiversity in Southwestern Amazonia. The aim of this study was to determine the floristic composition, patterns of species richness, and geographical distribution and knowledge gaps (collection effort) of the epiphytic vascular flora of the Brazilian State of Acre. We analyzed the database of the Flora of Acre and found a total of 331 species and 32 families of angiosperms and ferns. Almost half of the epiphytic flora of Acre (48% of species) occurs only in Northern Brazil. Of the total species, 56% are restricted to Amazonia. The distribution of the number of collections of epiphytes is concentrated in a few locations in the state and there is a positive correlation between the number of collections of epiphytes and the general index of collection density. The low and unequal sampling effort of epiphytes across the State, the high proportion of specimens identified at best to genus, and the...
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Even though it is well known that the flora of Amazonia is severely under-documented, botanical research in the region has been stagnant for the past two decades or more. An exception to this trend has been the international... more
Even though it is well known that the flora of Amazonia is severely under-documented, botanical research in the region has been stagnant for the past two decades or more. An exception to this trend has been the international collaboration in the state of Acre, Brazil. The objective of this study was to assess botanical progress in Southwestern Amazonia, specifically the evolution of our knowledge of the flora of the state of Acre five years after production of the first catalogue of its flora. Between 2006-2011, the Acre data-base recorded 2,110 determinations, and among these were 347 new records for Acre, representing an increase of 8.6% in the known flora, which as of 2011 comprised 4351 species. Of the new records, 6.6% (23) were new records for Brazil and 14.4% (50) represented genera new to Acre. The new records comprised 322 species of vascular plants and 22 of non-vascular plants. The most significant finding was that one of every six identifications was a new record f...
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Large-scale patterns of Amazonian biodiversity have until now been obscured by a sparse and scattered inventory record. Here we present the first comprehensive spatial model of tree a-diversity and tree density in Amazonian rainforests,... more
Large-scale patterns of Amazonian biodiversity have until now been obscured by a sparse and scattered inventory record. Here we present the first comprehensive spatial model of tree a-diversity and tree density in Amazonian rainforests, based on the largest-yet compilation of forest inventories and bolstered by a spatial interpolation technique that allows us to estimate diversity and density in areas that have never been inventoried. These data were then compared to continent-wide patterns of rainfall seasonality.We find that dry season length, while only weakly correlated with average tree a-diversity, is a strong predictor of tree density and of maximum tree a-diversity. The most diverse forests for any given DSL are concentrated in a narrow latitudinal band just south of the equator, while the least diverse forests for any given DSL are found in the Guayana Shield and Amazonian Bolivia. Denser forests are more diverse than sparser forests, even when we used a measure of diversity that corrects for sample size. We propose that rainfall seasonality regulates tree a-diversity and tree density by affecting shade tolerance and subsequently the number of different functional types of trees that can persist in an area.
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Forest fragmentation affects the structure and dynamics of plant communities, leading to biodiversity loss in forest remnants. In this paper we show that in a bamboo (Guadua weberbaueri Pilger) dominated forest fragment in southwestern... more
Forest fragmentation affects the structure and dynamics of plant communities, leading to biodiversity loss in forest remnants. In this paper we show that in a bamboo (Guadua weberbaueri Pilger) dominated forest fragment in southwestern Amazonia edge effect may be confounded by bamboo effect, which also occur inside the forest. We measured growth, mortality and, recruitment rate of trees with DBH ≥ 10 cm, in a fragment of bamboo dominated open forest in southwestern Amazonia, state of Acre, Brazil, in 15 plots at the forest edge and 15 plots inside the forest fragment, 500 m away from the border. Time interval between censuses was 1.8 years. The average diameter growth rate differed significantly between edge (3.82 ± 0.10 mm a-1) and interior (2.39 ± 0.18 mm a-1); but there were no differences in annual mortality rate (edge = 3.8 ± 2.5 % a-1 CV = 65.7%; interior = 3.6 ± 2.6% a-1 CV = 72.2%) or in annual recruitment rate (edge = 7.1 ± 3.2% a-1 CV = 45%; interior = 8.9 ± 7.9% a-1 CV = ...
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Introduction Recent decades have seen a major international effort to inventory tree communities in the Amazon Basin and Guiana Shield (Amazonia), but the vast extent and record diversity of these forests have hampered an understanding of... more
Introduction Recent decades have seen a major international effort to inventory tree communities in the Amazon Basin and Guiana Shield (Amazonia), but the vast extent and record diversity of these forests have hampered an understanding of basinwide patterns. To overcome this obstacle, we compiled and standardized species-level data on more than half a million trees in 1170 plots sampling all major lowland forest types to explore patterns of commonness, rarity, and richness. Methods The ~6-million-km 2 Amazonian lowlands were divided into 1° cells, and mean tree density was estimated for each cell by using a loess regression model that included no environmental data but had its basis exclusively in the geographic location of tree plots. A similar model, allied with a bootstrapping exercise to quantify sampling error, was used to generate estimated Amazon-wide abundances of the 4962 valid species in the data set. We estimated the total number of tree species in the Amazon by fitting t...
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Research Interests: Physical Geography, Environmental Science, Remote Sensing, Biomass, Forest Ecology And Management, and 15 moreEcology, Carbon Cycle, Medicine, Recruitment, REDD, Patterns, Allometry, Physical sciences, Deforestation, Emissions, Basin, Amazon rainforest, Carbon Stock Estimation, Ecological Applications, and Above ground biomass
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Research Interests: Genetics, Earth Sciences, Silviculture, Biology, DISTRIBUTION, and 14 moreBiological Sciences, Growth, Environmental Sciences, Wood, French Guiana, Biogeosciences, Functional diversity, Species Composition, Analysis of Variance, Distribution, Amazon basin, Wood Density, Physical Properties, and Branch
Research Interests: Earth Sciences, Environmental Science, Ecology, Land Use Change, Global Warming, and 13 moreBiological Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Tropical forest, Biogeosciences, Rainforest, Avoided deforestation, Carbon stocks, Allometric equations, Tree Allometry, Tropical rain forest, Secondary Forests, Wood Density, and Neotropical Forest
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While Amazonian forests are extraordinarily diverse, the abundance of trees is skewed strongly towards relatively few…
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The areas fo regrowth of native species in the tropical rainforest within Acre State, Brazil, were characterized and mapped, using a TM-Landsat dataset from 1985 to 1992. ERS-1 SAR and airbone C-band SAR data were collected to evaluate... more
The areas fo regrowth of native species in the tropical rainforest within Acre State, Brazil, were characterized and mapped, using a TM-Landsat dataset from 1985 to 1992. ERS-1 SAR and airbone C-band SAR data were collected to evaluate the potential of these new sensor systems to analyze the vegetation regrowth. The result found indicate the feasibility to discriminate between two regrowth stages: initial and intermediate. The areal distribution of regrowth was stored as thematic maps in a GIS. Using the combined multi-sensor and multi-temporal dataset, is was possible to characterize the dynamics of the biophysical features of this environment. The main result of this work was the estimation of those areas under regrowth for the entire State of Acre: from all the deforested area untill 1992 (11,050 square km), 9,73 are in the process of regeneration. Pages: 364-370
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Research Interests: Botany, Climate Change, Conservation Biology, Climatology, Carbon Dioxide, and 21 moreCarbon, Biomass, Science, Brazil, Ecology, Climate, Multidisciplinary, Atmosphere, Surface energy balance, Global Carbon Cycle, Trees, South America, Droughts, Ecosystem, Aboveground biomass, Long Term Monitoring, Surface Energy, Water Deficit, Tropical Climate, Carbon Sink, and Se Que Este Articulo Me Servirá De Mucho En La Investigacion Que Estoy Haciendo Gracias
For vegetation on white sand in Amazonia, the topography, soil nutrients, level of the water table, and rainfall combine to result in distinct formations, each with a characteristic physiognomy and each with a rather distinct floristic... more
For vegetation on white sand in Amazonia, the topography, soil nutrients, level of the water table, and rainfall combine to result in distinct formations, each with a characteristic physiognomy and each with a rather distinct floristic composition and very distinct dominants. We describe the physiognomies and present the floristic composition of nine formations, based on intensive fieldwork in NW Acre state, Brazil, where on six sites we have documented 222 species; 170 of them are woody plants or trunked palms ≥5 cm diam. Herbaceous species are good indicators for some of the formations. Distribution patterns and habitat specialization can be difficult to interpret because they often require familiarity with the localities and local terminologies involved. Many of the species show disjunct distributions congruent with the occurrence of other white-sand areas in northern South America. The nine formations within Acre are strongly dissimilar, with only two pairwise comparisons showing >50 percent similarity. Comparison of the Acre white-sand flora with datasets from Peruvian and Central + Eastern Amazonia show striking differences in composition and in taxonomic dominance, with more than 95 percent dissimilarity. White-sand formations in Acre and elsewhere are gravely affected by expanding human settlement; little is known about the regeneration and recovery of the degraded white-sand habitats. This complex sector of Acre's biological diversity is still virtually unrepresented in conservation units anywhere in Brazil's part of southwestern Amazonia, so it should be made an immediate conservation priority.
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Con el objetivo de facilitar una visión intercontinental de la florística y la biogeografía de las formaciones vegetales tropicales adaptadas a la sequía, hemos recopilado un base de datos de parcelas de inventario forestal en América del... more
Con el objetivo de facilitar una visión intercontinental de la florística y la biogeografía de las formaciones vegetales tropicales adaptadas a la sequía, hemos recopilado un base de datos de parcelas de inventario forestal en América del Sur (n=93), África (n=84) y Asia (n=92) consisten-tes en sabanas (susceptibles a incendios forestales), bosques secos tropicales (generalmente no susceptibles a incendios forestales), y bosques húmedos (sin incendios forestales). Hemos analizado la similitud florística intracontinental e intercontinental entre formaciones de vegetación. Los resultados del análisis de nuestra base de datos sugieren que las diferentes formaciones tienden a estar fuertemente agrupa das florísticamente por continente, pero que, entre continentes, las formaciones vegetales que superficialmente parecen similares (p. ej. sabanas) son florísticamente muy diferentes. En el Neotrópico, el bosque húmedo, la sabana y el bosque seco son florísticamente distintos, y en otras regiones no existe una clara división florística entre la sabana y el bosque seco tropical, aunque si existe una separación entre las formaciones húmedas y las secas. Sugerimos que, debido a su propensión a los incendios forestales, sería mejor considerar como sabanas muchas formaciones clasificadas en África y Asia como “bosque seco”. La diferenciación florística de formaciones vegetales similares en continentes diferentes sugiere que las gene-ralizaciones intercontinentales sobre la ecología, la biología y la conservación de las sabanas y los bosques secos tropicales pueden ser difíciles.
Floristics and biogeography of vegetation in seasonally dry tropical regions. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280879875_Floristics_and_biogeography_of_vegetation_in_seasonally_dry_tropical_regions [accessed Oct 9, 2015].
Floristics and biogeography of vegetation in seasonally dry tropical regions. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280879875_Floristics_and_biogeography_of_vegetation_in_seasonally_dry_tropical_regions [accessed Oct 9, 2015].
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Road construction demonstrably accelerates deforestation rates in tropical forests, but its consequences for forest degradation remain less clear. Weestimated a seriesofforest value metricsincluding components of biodiversity, carbon... more
Road construction demonstrably accelerates deforestation rates in tropical forests, but its consequences for forest degradation remain less clear. Weestimated a seriesofforest value metricsincluding components of biodiversity, carbon stocks, and timber and non-timber forest product resources, along the recently paved Inter-Oceanic High-way (IOH) integrating Brazil and Peru along the Bolivian border. We installed 69 vegetation plots in intact terrafirme forests representative of local community holdings near and far from the IOH, and we characterized 15 components of forest value for each plot. We observed strong geographic gradients in forest value components across the region, with increases from west to east in aboveground biomass and in the abundance of timber and non-timber forest product trees and regen-eration. Plots in communities in Pando, Bolivia, where the IOH remains in part unpaved, had the highest above-ground biomass, standing timber volumes and Brazil nut tree density. In contrast, communities in Madre de Dios, Peru, where settlements and unpaved portions of the IOH have existed for decades, and in Acre, Brazil, where paving of the IOH has been underway for more than a decade, were more degraded. Seven of thefifteen forest value components we measured increased with increasing distance from the IOH, although the magnitude of these effects was weak.Landscape scale remotesensing analysesshowedmuch stronger effects ofroadproximity on deforestation. We suggest that remote sensing techniques including canopy spectral signatures might be calibrated to characterize multiple components of forest value, so that we can estimate landscape scale impacts of infrastructure developments on both deforestation and forest degradation in tropical regions.
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Atmospheric carbon dioxide records indicate that the land surface has acted as a strong global carbon sink over recent decades1,2, with a substantial fraction of this sink probably located in the tropics3, particularly in the Amazon4.... more
Atmospheric carbon dioxide records indicate that the land surface has acted as a strong global carbon sink over recent decades1,2, with a substantial fraction of this sink probably located in the tropics3, particularly in the Amazon4. Nevertheless, it is unclear how the terrestrial carbon sink will evolve as climate and atmospheric composition continue to change. Here we analyse the historical evolution of the biomass dynamics of the Amazon rainforest over three decades using a distributed network of 321 plots. While this analysis confirms thatAmazon forests have acted as a long-term net biomass sink, we find a long-term decreasing trend of carbon accumulation.
Rates of net increase in above-ground biomass declined by one-third during the past decade compared to the 1990s. This is a consequence of growth rate increases levelling off recently, while biomass mortality persistently increased throughout, leading to a shortening of carbon residence times. Potential drivers for the mortality increase include greater climate variability, and feedbacks of faster growth on mortality, resulting in shortened tree longevity5. The observed decline
of theAmazon sink divergesmarkedly fromthe recent increase
in terrestrial carbon uptake at the global scale1,2, and is contrary to expectations based on models6.
The response of the Earth’s land surface to increasing levels of
atmosphericCO2 and a changing climate provide important feedbacks on future greenhouse warming6,7. One of the largest ecosystem carbon pools on Earth is the Amazon forest, storing around 150–200 Pg C in living biomass and soils8. Earlier studies based on forest inventories in the Amazon Basin showed the tropical forest here to be acting as a strong carbon sink with an estimated annual uptake of 0.42–0.65 PgCyr21 for 1990–2007, around 25% of the residual terrestrial carbon sink3,4. There is, however, substantial uncertainty as to how the Amazon forest will respond to future climatic and atmospheric composition changes. Some earlier modelling studies predicted a large-scale dieback of the Amazon rainforest9, while more recent studies predict a carbon sink well into the twenty-first century due to a CO2 fertilization
effect6. The realism of such model predictions remains low owing to uncertainty associated with future climate and vegetation responses6,7 in particular changes in forest dynamics5,10,11. Thus, direct observations of tropical tree responses are crucial to examine what changes are actually
occurring and what to expect in the future. Here we analyse the longest and largest spatially distributed time series of forest dynamics for tropical South America.
Rates of net increase in above-ground biomass declined by one-third during the past decade compared to the 1990s. This is a consequence of growth rate increases levelling off recently, while biomass mortality persistently increased throughout, leading to a shortening of carbon residence times. Potential drivers for the mortality increase include greater climate variability, and feedbacks of faster growth on mortality, resulting in shortened tree longevity5. The observed decline
of theAmazon sink divergesmarkedly fromthe recent increase
in terrestrial carbon uptake at the global scale1,2, and is contrary to expectations based on models6.
The response of the Earth’s land surface to increasing levels of
atmosphericCO2 and a changing climate provide important feedbacks on future greenhouse warming6,7. One of the largest ecosystem carbon pools on Earth is the Amazon forest, storing around 150–200 Pg C in living biomass and soils8. Earlier studies based on forest inventories in the Amazon Basin showed the tropical forest here to be acting as a strong carbon sink with an estimated annual uptake of 0.42–0.65 PgCyr21 for 1990–2007, around 25% of the residual terrestrial carbon sink3,4. There is, however, substantial uncertainty as to how the Amazon forest will respond to future climatic and atmospheric composition changes. Some earlier modelling studies predicted a large-scale dieback of the Amazon rainforest9, while more recent studies predict a carbon sink well into the twenty-first century due to a CO2 fertilization
effect6. The realism of such model predictions remains low owing to uncertainty associated with future climate and vegetation responses6,7 in particular changes in forest dynamics5,10,11. Thus, direct observations of tropical tree responses are crucial to examine what changes are actually
occurring and what to expect in the future. Here we analyse the longest and largest spatially distributed time series of forest dynamics for tropical South America.
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Contemporary conservation interventions must balance potential trade-offs between multiple ecosystem services. In tropical forests, much attention has focused on the extent to which carbon-based conservation provided by REDD+ policies can... more
Contemporary conservation interventions must balance potential trade-offs between multiple ecosystem services. In tropical forests, much attention has focused on the extent to which carbon-based conservation provided by REDD+ policies can also mitigate biodiversity conservation. In the nearly one-third of tropical forests that are community owned or managed, conservation strategies must also balance the multiple uses of forest products that support local livelihoods. Although much discussion has focused on policy options, little empirical evidence exists to evaluate the potential for trade-offs among different tropical forest value components. We assessed multiple components of forest value, including tree diversity, carbon stocks, and both timber and nontimber forest product resources, in forest communities across the trinational frontier of Brazil, Peru, and Bolivia. We installed 69 0.5-ha vegetation plots in local communities, and we characterized 15 components of forest value for each plot. Principal components analyses revealed two major axes of forest value, the first of which defined a trade-off between diversity of woody plant communities (taxonomic and functional) versus aboveground biomass and standing timber volume. The second axis described abundance of commercial species, with strong positive loadings for density of timber and nontimber forest products, including Brazil nut (Bertholletia excelsa) and copaiba oil (Copaifera spp.). The observed trade-off between different components of forest value suggests a potential for management conflicts prioritizing biodiversity conservation versus carbon stocks in the region. We discuss the potential for integrative indices of forest value for tropical forest conservation.
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We assessed the species composition and abundance of medium and large-sized mammals in an urban forest fragment in the Brazilian Amazon, and recorded the preference of some species for particular phytophysiognomies. We placed nine... more
We assessed the species composition and abundance of medium and large-sized mammals in an urban forest fragment in the Brazilian Amazon, and recorded the preference of some species for particular phytophysiognomies. We placed nine transects with 20 sand plots each in three phytophysiognomies: open rainforest with a dominance of bamboos (OFB), open rainforest with palm trees (OFP), and dense rainforest (DF). We calculated species abundance as the number of records/plot.day, in a total of 2,700 plots.day. We recorded twelve mammal species; Sylvilagus brasiliensis(Linnaeus, 1758) and Dasyprocta fuliginosa(Wagler, 1831) were the most abundant. The results differed among phytophysiognomies: DF presented the highest mammal diversity, whereas the species composition of OFP was less similar than that of other phytophysiognomies. Rodents showed higher preference for OFP and Sylvilagus brasiliensiswas more abundant in OFB. The study area showed high species richness, with the occurrence of mesopredators, but there was a predominance of common species adaptable to disturbed environments, which reflects the severe isolation degree of the forest fragment and the hunting pressure that is still present.