Effects of landscape composition and site land-use intensity on secondary succession in a tropical dry forest

Social ecological dynamics of tropical secondary forests

“…Whether the recovery of secondary forests occurs rapidly or not is a crucial question for the conservation of tropical forests and biodiversity under anthropized landscapes (Chazdon, 2014). Findings from our project coincides with others indicating that key components of vegetation structure, such as species richness, standing biomass, and key functions such as primary productivity and soil organic matter tend to recover within the first 25 years of succession in both dry and humid areas (Lohbeck et al, 2012;Poorter et al, 2016;Rozendaal et al, 2019;Mora et al, 2018;Gavito et al, 2021a,b;Pérez-Cárdenas et al, 2021). This clearly contrasts to species composition projections which span several centuries, according to a multi-site study across the Neotropics (Rozendaal et al, 2019).…”

“…The forest composition of the surrounding area (forest cover relative to non-forested area) has been proposed as a key driver, because it affects propagule availability and seed arrival to successional sites, impacting thus temporal trajectories of species recruitment, turnover and functional composition (Fahrig, 2013). By superimposing a landscape composition gradient over the classic chronosequence approach (followed by most of the studies in the present issue), Pérez-Cárdenas et al (2021) supported such hypothesis by detecting that forest proportion positively affects species richness recovery, while pasture cover negatively affects forest standing biomass recovery. Similar effects have also been detected in our wet forest site (Wies et al, 2021), overall suggesting that landscape composition surrounding a given plot of secondary forest impacts its successional pathway.…”

“…Interdisciplinary place-based long-term approaches provide unique insights on the ecology and management of tropical secondary forests by small holders. Understanding the societal drivers and motivations associated to these forests (Tauro et al, 2018), the ways in which they are managed (Monroy-Sais et al, 2016;Sánchez-Romero et al, 2021), and the dynamics of their biodiversity (Gavito et al, 2021a;Marroquín-Páramo et al, 2021;Martínez-ramos et al, 2018;Pérez-Cárdenas et al, 2021) ecosystem functions and services (Cortés-Calderón et al, 2021;Gavito et al, 2021b;Siddique et al, 2021) requires the intertwining of a range of social and ecological disciplines. The long-term monitoring of secondary forest plots, with different management histories and landscape contexts, provides a wealth of information on these dynamics.…”

“…The choice of two very contrasting forests, a moist one in the Lacandon Forest, Chiapas (Chajul), and a dry one in the Pacific Coast of Mexico, Jalisco (Chamela) resulting from the above historical process, strategically allowed us to assess the role of biophysical drivers on tropical secondary forest dynamics. As the project evolved, we increasingly paid attention to the role of management legacies and landscape context on such dynamics (Pérez-Cárdenas et al, 2021;Wies et al, 2021). Such efforts also led to a growing emphasis on the tradeoffs emerging from secondary succession, especially on the ecosystem services provided both to local smallholders and to the planet at large (Mora et al, 2016;Naime et al, 2020).…”

Differential ecological filtering across life cycle stages drive old-field succession in a neotropical dry forest

“…Seeds and seedlings were found at very low densities and species densities in recently abandoned pastures. To cope with this potential bottleneck for forest regeneration and succession, management at the landscape scale would ensure that enough forest in the matrix remains to function as a source of species (see more details in Pérez-Cárdenas et al, 2021). The high prevalence of wind-dispersed species in old-growth and secondary TDFs (Vieira and Scariot, 2006;Ceccon and Hernández, 2009;Hilje et al, 2015), which can disperse over long distances (Green and Johnson, 1995), enhances the important role of remaining old growth and old secondary forests in the landscape and thereby the strong function of the landscape matrix.…”