Forest communities in secondary high Andean forests (Azuay, Ecuador)
Vol 3, Issue 2, 2020
VIEWS - 468 (Abstract) 336 (pdf)
Abstract
In the mountains of southern Ecuador there are areas occupied by high Andean secondary forests formed as a result of anthropogenic activities. Here we identified different secondary forest communities located above 2,900 m a.s.l., based on their floristic similarity. In each community the floristic composition was described by total, exclusive and shared species. Estimation curves were used to provide richness and diversity metrics. Structure was analyzed according to abundance and basal area. In addition, the role of environmental variables in explaining floristic conformation and structure was evaluated through principal component and redundancy analysis. Three forest communities were identified. The highest value in diversity and basal area was for the community located at the highest altitude and lowest temperature. Variation in species composition was explained by climatic and geographic environmental variables, density by edaphic and climatic variables, and basal area by topographic variables. Species richness and basal area did not show a similar altitudinal distribution pattern with other Andean tropical forests. Therefore, it was deduced that floristic variation, species richness and basal area are also explained by the chronological age of secondary succession, as shown by indicator species belonging to different ecological groups. It was concluded that floristic composition, richness and vegetation structure in forest communities of high Andean secondary forests are influenced by climatic, topographic, physiographic and geographic variables linked to the age of succession.
Keywords
Full Text:
pdfReferences
1. Barthlott W, Mutke J, Rafiqpoor D, et al. Global centers of vascular plant diversity. Nova Acta Leopoldina 2005; 92: 6183.
2. Homeier J, Breckle S, Gunter S, et al. Tree diversity, forest structure and productivity along altitudinal and topographical gradients in a species-rich ecuadorian montane rain forest. Biotropica 2010; 42: 140148.
3. Günter S, Weber M, Erreis R, et al. Influence of distance to forest edges on natural regeneration of abandoned pastures: A case study in the tropical mountain rain forest of Southern Ecuador. European Journal of Forest Research 2007; 126: 6775.
4. Yepes AP, Valle JI, Jaramillo SL, et al. Structural recovering in Andean successional forests from Porce (Antioquia, Colombia). Revista de Biología tropical 2010; 58: 427445.
5. DeWalt S, Maliakal S, Denslow J. Changes in vegetation structure and composition along a tropical forest chronosequence: Implications for wildlife. Forest Ecology and Management 2003; 182: 139151.
6. Zanini K, Bergamin R, Machado R, et al. Atlantic rain forest recovery: Successional drivers of floristic and structural patterns of secondary forest in Southern Brazil. Journal of Vegetation Science 2014; 25: 16541103.
7. Finegan B. The management potential of neotropical secondary lowland rain forest. Forest Ecology and Management 1992; 47: 295321.
8. Chazdon R. Beyond deforestation: Restoring forests and ecosystem services on degraded lands. Science 2008; 320: 14581460.
9. Guariguata M, R Ostertag. Neotropical secondary forest succession: Changes in structural and functional characteristics. Forest Ecology and Management 2001; 148: 185–206.
10. Chain-Guadarrama A, Finegan B, Vilchez S, et al. Determinants of rain-forest floristic variation on an altitudinal gradient in southern Costa Rica. Journal of Tropical Ecology 2012; 28: 463481.
11. Castellanos-Castro C, Newton A. Environmental heterogeneity influences successional trajectories in Colombian seasonally dry tropical forests. Biotropica 2015; 47: 660671.
12. Girardin C, Farfan-Rios W, Garcia K, et al. Spatial patterns of above-ground structure, biomass and composition in a network of six Andean elevation transects. Plant Ecology & Diversity 2014; 7: 161171.
13. Unger M, Homeier J, Leuschner C. Effects of soil chemistry on tropical forest biomass and productivity at different elevations in the equatorial Andes. Oecologia 2012; 170: 263274.
14.
15. Chust G, Chave J, Condit R, et al. Determinants and spatial modeling of tree β-diversity in a tropical forest landscape in Panama. Journal of Vegetation Science 2006; 17: 8392.
16. Báez S, Malizia A, Carilla J, et al. Large-scale patterns of turnover and basal area change in Andean forests. PloS ONE 2015; 10: e0126594.
17. Ministry of Environment of Ecuador, EC [MAE]. Ecosystem classification system of continental Ecuador. Quito, Ecuador: MAE; 2013. p. 232.
18. National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology of Ecuador, EC [INAMHI]. Anuario Metereológico N° 51-2011. Quito, Ecuador: INAMHI; 2014. p. 130.
19. Colwell R, Chao A, Gotelli N, et al. Models and estimators linking individual-based and sample-based rarefaction, extrapolation and comparison of assemblages. Journal of Plant Ecology 2012; 5: 321.
20. Di Rienzo J, Casanoves F, Pla L, et al. Qeco-Quantitative ecology software: A collaborativeapproach. Latin American Journal of Conservation 2010; 1: 73–75.
21. Di Rienzo J, Casanoves F, Balzarini M, et al. InfoStat version 2011. InfoStat Group, National University of Córdoba. Córdoba, Argentina; 2011.
22. Jørgensen PM, León-Yánez S. Catalogue of the vascular plants of Ecuador. Monographs in Systematic Botany from the Missouri Botanical Garden 1999; 75: 11181.
23. Toledo M, Salick J. Secondary succession and indigenous management in semideciduous forest fallows of the Amazon Basin. Biotropica 2006; 38: 161–170.
24. Phillips O, Vargas P, Monteagudo A, et al. Habitat association among Amazonian tree species: A landscape-scale approach. Journal of Ecology 2003; 91: 757775.
25. John R, Dalling J, Harms K, et al. Soil nutrients influence spatial distributions of tropical tree species. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2007; 104: 864869.
26. Tiessen H, Cuevas E, Chacon P. The role of soil organic matter in sustaining soil fertility. Nature 1994; 371: 783785.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.24294/nrcr.v3i2.1545
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright (c) 2020 Oswaldo Jadán, Cristian Toledo, Braulio Tepán, Hugo Cedillo, Ángel Peralta, Pedro Zea, Patricio Castro, Carlos Vaca
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
This site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.