Document: SCO-3-67-20
Spatial- temporal factors and their influence on subsequent tree species recruitment in secondary terre firme forests of Central Amazonia.
BERGEN, S.* 1, M.HONZAK 2 and G.BRADSHAW 3
Biological Dynamics of Fragmented Forests Project, Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil 1
University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 USA 2
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, Santa Barbara, CA 93110 USA 3
Abstract:
Factors influencing tree species recruitment are well studied in Central America but less prevalent in the Central Amazon Basin (Manaus, Brazil). Recent studies have established that tree species recruitment richness is elevated within 100m of a mature forest edge for 20 year old stands. This study extends the spatial and temporal scale of these earlier conclusions to 6.4 km and 40 years, respectively, in order to determine the influence of landsccape structure and composition upon tree species recruitment richness, statistically. 29, 10 by 100m transects were established in secondary forests (4- 40yo) measuring species, DBH, position, and stand age. The surrounding landscape structure and composition was quantified via GIS and remote sensing to measure fundamental landscape metrics. Multiple linear regression analysis detected landscape structure and composition as having a significant influence in predicting species richness, even after correcting the data for age. From these findings, a spatially explicit hierarchical scale model was developed to assess the spatial scale at which these landscape level phenomena were occurring at. With the use of spatial regression models landuse scenarios will be evaluated in terms of sustainabilty (of species richness) to quantify their utility in preserving biological species diversity.
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This abstract is being presented at: 11:00 AM in session:
Oral Session #59: Plant Communities: Vegetative Analysis.