Promoting Bird Functional Diversity on Landscapes with a Matrix of Planted Eucalyptus spp. in the Atlantic Forest.

Promoting the diversity of biological communities in areas of agricultural production is a very current debate since protected areas may not be sufficient to ensure biodiversity conservation. Among the biological communities affected by the production areas are birds, which show rapid responses to changes in the landscape. Here we seek to understand how landscape planning, concerning its composition and configuration, in areas with a matrix of planted Eucalyptus spp. forests influences the functional diversity of bird assemblages in the Atlantic Forest. Our results show that the spatial distribution design of planted forests in terms of age, land cover and clone types have effects on bird diversity with regard to functional divergence, functional evenness and species richness. These results reinforce the importance of good management for the maintenance of bird diversity. We found that bird functional diversity in planted forest matrices increased with the proximity index, proportion of native vegetation and age importance value, and is negatively influenced by edge density and proportion of forest plantation. For bird conservation, it is thus better to associate Eucalyptus spp. with other cover types in the landscape. These results corroborate that, to increase bird functional diversity, it is possible to associate conservation and production in the same landscape. Mosaic landscapes have great potential to contribute to the conservation of bird biodiversity outside protected areas. However, decisions regarding the management of planted forests and planning of improved areas intended for conservation seem to be decisive to ensure the maintenance of bird biodiversity.

Seizing resilience windows to foster passive recovery in the forest-water interface in Amazonian lands.

Forest regeneration has increased in many tropical abandoned lands and current restoration commitments in this region aim to restore over 1,400,000 km2 of degraded land by 2030. Although regenerating forests recover biomass, biodiversity, and processes with time, the recovery trajectories may be uncertain due to past disturbances. Currently, there is a lack of knowledge to sustain the effectiveness of passive regeneration for the recovery of riparian forests and the adjacent waterbodies in the tropics, which may compromise the outcomes of ongoing and future tropical riparian restoration programs. We evaluated the drivers of riparian forest structural recovery and how this relates to stream conditions in 12 abandoned pasturelands in eastern Brazilian Amazonia. These pasturelands range across regeneration age (pasture (PA) - 0 to 4 years; young regeneration (YR) - 8 to 12 years; old regeneration (OR) - 18 to 22 years) and years of past land-use (PA - 23.25 average years of past land-use, YR - 18.25, OR - 7). We compared the conditions of these sites to 4 reference sites with conserved forests (REF, >100 years), where there was no recorded pasture use in the past. Short-term responses of forests and streams to passive regeneration indicated high ecosystem resilience after low to intermediate past land-use intensity, reflected in the improvement of stream ecosystems. Such high resilience is possibly attributable to low- to intermediate-intensity pasture-related disturbances, remaining forest matrix, and residual structures (e.g. roots, sprouts, and in-stream wood) observed in the area. Our results suggest a recovery by 12 to 20 years for riparian forests of this region. However, areas degraded by intensive land-use apparently showed delayed recovery. We conclude that seizing resilience windows (defined here as the period when ecosystems retain high potential resilience) is essential to foster passive recovery of riparian forests and streams more cost-effectively in the tropics.