Forest fragmentation and impacts of intensive agriculture: Responses from different tree functional groups

Abstract

Agricultural landscapes are seen as areas of extreme importance for studying and developing strategies which integrate biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services with food production. The main strategies for intensifying agriculture are based on conventional agricultural practices of frequently using inputs for fertilization and correcting soil pH. Some studies show that these practices generate impacts on nearby forest fragments through soil contamination and increasing nutrient content. The objective of this study was to identify the impacts on the functional groups of sciophilous (late successional/shade-tolerant species) and heliophilous (pioneer/sun-loving) species of a tree community of 14 forest fragments near pasture areas and agricultural areas under conventional practices, raising the hypothesis that higherfertility forest fragments adjacent to intensive agriculture modify the floristic composition of the tree community. Consequently, this study is based on the following questions: i) Do forest fragments within intensive farming environments present differences in floristic composition of species?; ii) Does the soil fertility influence the tree species composition?; iii) Which variables influence species abundance and richness in the forest fragments with different types of use around their environment? The floristic composition of fragments close to agricultural areas are more similar to each other than the composition of fragments close to pasture areas. Furthermore, the General Linear Model (GLM) results show a clear influence of the intensive farming environment on the richness and abundance of the two functional groups in the forest fragments, directly benefiting the abundance of heliophilous species, which are also benefited by the greater declivity and smaller fragment area, while the abundance of sciophytes is negatively correlated with these last two variables. The increase of calcium content is beneficial for the richness of heliophilous species, while the increase in phosphorus PLOS ONE |

Short-Term Responses of Aquatic and Terrestrial Biodiversity to Riparian Restoration Measures Designed to Control the Invasive Arundo donax L.

“…More extensive and ecofriendly agricultural practices and associated environmental management (e.g., creation of buffer areas) could constitute a good base to prevent biological invasions. Intensive agricultural practices usually imply soil over-fertilization and the creation of an abrupt border between riparian forests and crops, which creates an edge effect that benefits generalists, pioneer and invasive species [107]. Burning has been traditionally used by farmers and landowners as a quick control method of A. donax but it has resulted completely ineffective and counter-productive due to the stronger post-fire resprouting exhibited by the giant reed [9].…”

On the relation between monocultures and ecosystem services in the Global South: A review

“…Forest cover was considered as a general proxy to prove the environmental dimension (forest as important providers of ES), for two reasons. By one hand, forest could be considered as the structure that supports ecological functions and final ES to people (Potschin et al, 2016); on the other hand, because of the literature that documented the implications produced by monocultures on forests (Gibson et al, 2011;Tenius Ribeiro et al, 2019;Winkler et al, 2021). Secondly, we highlighted historical changes in the harvested areas of the crops identified in the SLR, and we correlated this history with trends in forest cover in order to provide specific analysis between monocultures and forests cover.…”

“…In addition, when analyzing study area description of the papers, the authors mostly described their study area with outstanding natural context no matter the landscape transformations by the crops. To cite some examples, authors mention: areas with remnant native grasslands (Hodara and Poggio, 2016), with dense vegetation (Tenius Ribeiro et al, 2019), mountains dominate region (Rigal et al, 2020), subtropical mountain region (Liu et al, 2020), preserved savannas (Lavelle et al, 2014), host of rich biodiversity (Marquardt et al, 2013), or even Peruvian amazon (Dominik et al, 2017).…”

“…This is an implication mentioned in almost all the crops. See for instance cacao (Wade et al, 2010), coffee (Anand et al, 2010;Davidson, 2005), corn (Tenius Ribeiro et al, 2019), grain (Wang et al, 2015), oil palm and rubber (Marquardt et al, 2013;Mumme et al, 2015), rice (Dominik et al, 2017), soybeans (Hodara and Poggio, 2016), and umari (Wood et al, 2016). In addition, there were further trade-offs on regulating ES identified (Table 1).…”

Linking Ecosystem Services to Social Well-Being: An Approach to Assess Land Degradation

“…Agricultural ecosystems have services for providing edible plants as food and disservices that can be threats to other ecosystems (Shah et al, 2019). Agriculture fragments natural ecosystems and declines species richness (Ribeiro et al, 2019). Fragments can significantly alter the nutrient cycle (Gessner et al, 2010), plant production (Aguilar et al, 2006), decomposition process (Lewis, 2009), and pollination (Aguilar et al, 2006).…”