Are biotic and abiotic factors and seedling mechanical damage in forest-edge fragments always different from the interior?
Thamy Evellini Dias Marques A , Luiz Alberto Beijo B and Flavio Nunes Ramos A CA Laboratório de Ecologia de Fragmentos Florestais (http://www2.unifal-mg.edu.br/ecofrag), Universidade Federal de Alfenas, UNIFAL-MG, Rua Gabriel Monteiro da Silva, 714, Centro, 37130-000 Alfenas, MG, Brasil.
B Departamento de Ciências Exatas, Universidade Federal de Alfenas, UNIFAL, Rua Gabriel Monteiro da Silva, 714, Centro, 37130-000 Alfenas, MG, Brasil.
C Corresponding author. Email: fnramos@gmail.com
Australian Journal of Botany 58(4) 241-247 https://doi.org/10.1071/BT09112
Submitted: 25 June 2009 Accepted: 16 April 2010 Published: 22 June 2010
Abstract
The regeneration of fragments and adjacent landscape depends on, among others factors, seedling establishment, both in the interior and at the edge. This work considers differences between the edge and fragment interior in (1) environmental descriptors (canopy openness, temperature, soil moisture, bamboo and liana coverage and litterfall), (2) the total number of seedlings damaged and (3) the type of seedling damage. The present study was carried out in four Atlantic forest fragments in south-eastern Brazil. Environmental descriptors and artificial seedling damage were measured in 10 plots, 10 × 10 m each, in each forest fragment, i.e. five at the edges and five in the interior. Litterfall was the main cause of seedling damage in the present study. Bamboo and liana coverage, litterfall, soil moisture, canopy openness, minimal and maximal temperature and temperature amplitude, as well as the type and quantity of damage did not differ between the edge and the fragment interior. Temperature, however, was higher in the interior than in the edge fragments. The lack of difference between the edge and interior fragments was probably due to the reduced size of the remnants of the Atlantic forest studied, resulting from an intense internal anthropogenic impact on them and the early onset of this landscape fragmentation, which is quite old (~200 years).
Acknowledgements
We thank Adriana Maria Zanforlin Martini, Rita de Cássia Quitete Portela, Maria E. P. Martucci, Diego G. S. Pereira for their useful suggestions, and Jim Hesson for correcting the English. T. E. D. M. was supported by an undergraduate research scholarship from the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais (FAPEMIG, grant # 23087.002131/2006-18). This study is part of the project ‘The influence on plant community and populations from size and edges of Atlantic forest fragments in the South of Minas Gerais, Brazil’, funded by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais (FAPEMIG, grant EDT-340/07).
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