Affiliation:
1. Universidade Federal do Paraná
2. Universidade Regional de Blumenau e FURB
Abstract
Abstract
Context
Fragmentation is recognized as one of the main factors affecting species and functionality losses in tropical landscapes.
Objectives
In this study, we assess how landscape quality and quantity affect taxonomic and functional diversities and carbon stocks in the Atlantic Forest.
Methods
We used a large dataset, which comprises 92,754 adult trees of 668 species, distributed over an area of 95,733 km² in the state of Santa Catarina, southern Brazil. In each plot, we quantified the taxonomic diversity (species richness), the functional diversity (functional richness), and the aboveground carbon stock and related it to different landscape metrics (fragment area and total area, number of fragments, total edge area, index of the largest fragment, effective network size and aggregation index) and anthropogenic impacts in three surrounding landscape buffers (radius 1000, 3000 and 5000 m). We built multiple regression models, selecting the best models (Akaike's criterion), to assess the influence of the landscape and anthropogenic index on diversities and carbon stocks.
Results
Our study shows that the landscape quantity and quality, and the anthropic effects are factors that negatively affect the functioning of ecosystems, reinforcing that small-scale exploration, within the fragment itself, is an important factor in reducing diversity and carbon stock.
Conclusions
The importance of considering local exploitation has important implications for conservation, and these results bring important insights for conservation, especially for forest fragments in anthropized landscapes, where exploration within the fragments are factors that interfere in the conservation and maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.
Publisher
Research Square Platform LLC
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