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

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 the sensitivity of metrics to linear infrastructure. Currently, the AF remnants comprise 22.9% of FV and 36.3% of NV, an extent that has decreased by 2.4% and 3.6% since 1986, respectively. Linear infrastructure affected mainly the largest fragments (>500,000 ha), reducing their size by 56%-94%. The period before 2005 was characterized by loss of FV and NV (3% and 3.43%) and decrease in the number of FV and NV fragments (8.6% and 8.1%). In contrast, after 2005 the vegetation stabilized, with a recovery of 1 Mha of FV (0.6%) and an increase in the number of fragments, due in part to environmental policies. However, the AF is still a highly fragmented domain: 97% of the vegetation fragments are small (<50 ha), with an average fragment size between 16.3 and 25.5 ha; 50-60% of the vegetation is <90 m from its edges, and the isolation between fragments is high (250-830 m). Protected areas and indigenous territories cover only 10% of the AF vegetation, and most vegetation lies are >10 km in these areas. Our work highlights the importance of legislation and analysis of landscape dynamics to help with future conservation and restoration programs for biodiversity in the Atlantic Forest.

Citação

@article{vancine_etal_2024,
    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 = {Biological Conservation},
    year = {2024},
    month = {03},
    issn = {1873-2917},
    doi = {10.1016/j.biocon.2024.110499},
    url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2024.110499},
    eprint = {},
}