Could cattle ranching and soybean cultivation be sustainable? A systematic review and a meta-analysis for the Amazon

Abstract: Tropical forests are being destroyed to make space for agricultural activities with the assumption that they are required to feed the growing global population. Consequently, more sustainable practices are needed to guarantee food security and environmental protection of highly threatened natural biodiversity hotspots like the Amazon rainforest. Cattle ranching and soybean cultivation are by far the greater drivers of land use change and deforestation in the Amazon region. We performed a systematic review of papers related to these two main drivers and a meta-analysis on the effects of sustainable practices on different ecosystem services. The results of the review highlight a lar…

Colonization of eurasian jay Garrulus glandarius (L.) and holm oaks Quercus ilex (L.): the establishment of ecological interactions in urban areas.

Here we describe the relationship between holm oak seedling diffusion and jay recolonization in an urban orchard.

Boschi di neoformazione in Italia: approfondimenti conoscitivi e orientamenti gestionali

Nelle regioni meridionali, e in Sicilia in particolare, la fisionomia della vegetazione forestale post-abbandono è quella della macchia o arbusteto che difficilmente evolve verso un bosco propriamente detto. Il processo evolutivo della vegetazione spesso non raggiunge lo stadio di bosco non perché le condizioni ambientali non lo consentano ma per due ragioni fondamentali: i disturbi, in particolare gli incendi e il pascolo, e le limitazioni nell’arrivo di propaguli, causate dalla mancanza di piante madri, dei dispersori dei semi o entrambi. Infatti, in contesti favorevoli (assenza di disturbi e arrivo dei propaguli) la vegetazione evolve sino al bosco. Le formazioni preforestali frutto dei …

The role of plant-animal and plant-plant interactions in vegetation dynamics and ecological restoration in a Mediterranean landscape

Spatio-temporal patterns and drivers of secondary succession in a Mediterranean landscape

In recent years, many Mediterranean agricultural lands have been abandoned, reforested, rewilded and ecologically restored, creating different templates and trajectories for the development of secondary succession. Our objective was to verify whether past legacies of woody vegetation (remnant forest, shrub patches and reforestations) influenced the current spatial pattern of woody cover in a mid-successional Mediterranean area, identifying spatial cold and hotspots (i.e: low/slow or high/fast cover increase) and looking for footprints of seed-disperser and herbivore-mediated processes at landscape and local scales. The study took place in three 500x200 m plots in a formerly managed and part…

Functional Redundancy and Complementarities of Seed Dispersal by the Last Neotropical Megafrugivores

Submitted by Vitor Silverio Rodrigues (vitorsrodrigues@reitoria.unesp.br) on 2014-05-27T11:28:22Z No. of bitstreams: 0Bitstream added on 2014-05-27T14:42:48Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 2-s2.0-84873586375.pdf: 1508075 bytes, checksum: 7e697f6c67a83195e9b0cb525355980e (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2014-05-27T11:28:22Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2013-02-07 Background: Functional redundancy has been debated largely in ecology and conservation, yet we lack detailed empirical studies on the roles of functionally similar species in ecosystem function. Large bodied frugivores may disperse similar plant species and have strong impact on plant recruitment in tropical forests. Th…

Mamíferos não voadores do parque estadual carlos botelho, continuum florestal do paranapiacaba

The Atlantic Forest is one of the most studied Brazilian biomes in relation to its mammalian fauna. However, there is still a series of gaps of knowledge about the distribution and persistence of some of these species which prevents taking adequate conservation measures to better protect the mammals. In order to make the inventory of the non-volant mammalian fauna of the Carlos Botelho State Park (SP), we compiled data of camera trapping, diurnal census, track records, pitfall and live trapping collected over 8 years (2004-2012). We registered a total of 53 species, of which 12 are regionally threatened and one is an exotic species (Lepus europaeus), including the presence of most mammal sp…