Passive restoration of abandoned pastures from the nuclei of vegetation in the Atlantic Rainforest, Brazil

Abstract

The nuclei of vegetation are structures spontaneously formed by small clusters of individual shrubs and trees that, upon evolving in disturbed pastures can contribute to the ecological succession. In order to understand the evolution of passive restoration processes in tropical ecosystems, after extensive cattle ranching was stopped, environments with low environmental attributes were studied, located in the northern slope of the isolated mounds between floodplain. After 40 years of abandonment, the nuclei of vegetation colonized 20% of the graminoid ecosystems sampled, presenting at a moderate stage of disturbance. The floristic composition of the upper strata and regenerating showed that nuclei with two or more pioneer forest species and anemocoric dispersion syndrome, such as Moquiniastrum polymorphum, present a high probability of having their restoration processes catalyzed in time. Developed nuclei present higher richness and abundance in their regenerating stratum, besides zoological and non-pioneering species, suggesting positive interactions between the ecological processes, a condition that gives sustainability to the advances of the passive forest restoration. The improvement of this information can contribute to the development of models of induced restoration based on the effects of nucleation.

Keywords:
Natural regeneration; Ecological succession; Nucleation