The Atlantic Forest of South America: spatiotemporal dynamics of vegetation and implications for conservation

Analisamos a dinâmica espaço-temporal da estrutura da paisagem da vegetação na Mata Atlântica entre 1986 e 2020.

Autor

Maurício Humberto Vancine, Renata L. Muylaert, Bernardo Brandão Niebuhr, Júlia Emi de Faria Oshima, Vinicius Tonetti, Rodrigo Bernardo, Carlos De Angelo, Marcos Reis Rosa, Carlos Henrique Grohmann, Milton Cezar Ribeiro

Data de Publicação

30 de setembro de 2022

bioRxiv PDF

Resumo

The Atlantic Forest in South America (AF) is one of the world’s most diverse and threatened biodiversity hotspots. We present a comprehensive spatiotemporal analysis of 34 years of AF landscape change between 1986-2020. We analyzed landscape metrics of forest vegetation only (FV), forest plus other natural vegetation (NV), and investigated the sensitivity of metrics to linear infrastructure. Currently, remnants comprise about 23% of FV and 40% of NV, and have decreased by 2.4% and 3.6% since 1986, respectively. Linear infrastructure negatively affected large fragments (>500,000 ha) by breaking them apart. Our findings suggest that AF protection legislation adopted in mid-2005 has taken effect: between 1986-2005, there was a loss of FV and NV (3% and 3.45%) and a decrease in the number of FV and NV fragments (8.6% and 8.3%). Between 2005-2020, there was a relative recovery of FV (1 Mha; 0.6%), slight loss of NV (0.25 Mha; 0.15%) and increase in the number of FV and NV fragments (12% and 9%). Still, 97% of the vegetation fragments are small (<50 ha), with an average fragment size between 16 and 26 ha. Furthermore, 50-60% of the vegetation is <90 m from its edges, and the isolation between fragments is high (250- 830 m). Alarmingly, protected areas and indigenous territories cover only 10% of the AF and are very far from any fragments (>10 km). Our work highlights the importance of legislation and landscape dynamics analysis to help monitor and keep track of AF biodiversity conservation and restoration programs in the future.

Citação

@article{vancine_etal_2023a,
    author = {Maurício Humberto Vancine, Renata L. Muylaert, Bernardo Brandão Niebuhr, Júlia Emi de Faria Oshima, Vinicius Tonetti, Rodrigo Bernardo, Carlos De Angelo, Marcos Reis Rosa, Carlos Henrique Grohmann, Milton Cezar Ribeiro},
    title = "{The Atlantic Forest of South America: spatiotemporal dynamics of remaining vegetation and implications for conservation}",
    journal = {bioRxiv},
    year = {2023},
    month = {09},
    issn = {2692-8205},
    doi = {10.1101/2023.09.16.558076},
    url = {https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.09.16.558076},
    eprint = {https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.09.16.558076},
}