PARENT SESSION
Oral Session #6: Disturbance Ecology of Forests: Fire, Patterns. Presiding: R. DeFries.
Monday, August 6, 2001. 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM. Hall of Ideas F.
Land use legacies and the recovery of a tropical forest ecosystem.
FLECKER, ALEXANDER1, ALLEN, RICHARD1, POWER, ALISON1, AIDE, T.2, GLOR, RICHARD3, RIOS, GILBERTO4, TEMPLER, PAMELA1,5, ZIMMERMAN, JESS2, 1 2 3 4 5
ABSTRACT- We investigated whether the legacy of land use practices influences recovery of ecosystem structure and function in an agriculturally dominated landscape in and around Los Haitises National Park (LHNP) of the Dominican Republic. We examined the degree of similarity for selected components of ecosystem structure and function between: 1) more intact forest remnants, 2) sites that previously experienced different land use histories, and 3) active agricultural sites. Four distinct taxa were surveyed (trees, lizards, ants, and birds) among 37 study plots. In addition, we examined various soil microbial processes to provide insight into ecosystem recovery from a functional perspective. We hypothesized that recovery of animal communities and ecosystem functional processes would largely track patterns of plant communities. Surprisingly large differences were observed in the degree to which different faunal groups corresponded with plants. For example, bird percent similarity was tightly correlated with similarity values for plants; in contrast, there was virtually no correspondence between plant and lizard percent similarity. Likewise, there was little correspondence in the rates of different soil functional processes and no single soil process served as an adequate surrogate for a broad suite of functional processes. Our results suggest that responses of different taxonomic groups and functional processes to tropical forest degradation may be largely idiosyncratic. Despite the appeal of indicator organisms and surrogate processes there may be no easy shortcuts for assessing ecological recovery.
KEY WORDS: biodiversity, restoration, nutrient cycling, community structure