Journal
ECOLOGICAL MODELLING
Volume 222, Issue 12, Pages 1986-1997Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2011.03.038
Keywords
Habitat fragmentation; Disentangling fragmentation processes and edge effects; Biodiversity loss; Landscape degradation; Tree species impoverishment; Carbon loss
Categories
Funding
- German Federal Ministry of Education and Research BMBF [01 LB 0202, 01 LB 0202 A1]
- European Community [MOIF-CT-2006-604 40571]
- FAPESP [99/05123-4]
- CNPq [690144/01-6]
- Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo (FAPESP) [99/05123-4] Funding Source: FAPESP
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Land use leads to massive habitat destruction and fragmentation in tropical forests. Despite its global dimensions the effects of fragmentation on ecosystem dynamics are not well understood due to the complexity of the problem. We present a simulation analysis performed by the individual-based model FORMIND. The model was applied to the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, one of the world's biodiversity hot spots, at the Plateau of Sao Paulo. This study investigates the long-term effects of fragmentation processes on structure and dynamics of different sized remnant tropical forest fragments (1-100 ha) at community and plant functional type (PFT) level. We disentangle the interplay of single effects of different key fragmentation processes (edge mortality, increased mortality of large trees, local seed loss and external seed rain) using simulation experiments in a full factorial design. Our analysis reveals that particularly small forest fragments below 25 ha suffer substantial structural changes, biomass and biodiversity loss in the long term. At community level biomass is reduced up to 60%. Two thirds of the mid- and late-successional species groups, especially shade-tolerant (late successional climax) species groups are prone of extinction in small fragments. The shade-tolerant species groups were most strongly affected; its tree number was reduced more than 60% mainly by increased edge mortality. This process proved to be the most powerful of those investigated, explaining alone more than 80% of the changes observed for this group. External seed rain was able to compensate approximately 30% of the observed fragmentation effects for shade-tolerant species. Our results suggest that tropical forest fragments will suffer strong structural changes in the long term, leading to tree species impoverishment. They may reach a new equilibrium with a substantially reduced subset of the initial species pool, and are driven towards an earlier successional state. The natural regeneration potential of a landscape scattered with forest fragments appears to be limited, as external seed rain is not able to fully compensate for the observed fragmentation-induced changes. Our findings suggest basic recommendations for the management of fragmented tropical forest landscapes. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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