Tropical Dry Forests of Northern Minas Gerais, Brazil: Diversity, Conservation Status, and Natural Regeneration

• Published in: Tropical Dry Forests in the Americas pp. 87 - 100
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: United Kingdom CRC Press 2014; Taylor & Francis Group
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Botany & plant sciences; Geographical information systems (GIS) & remote sensing; Tropical Dry Forests; Minas Gerais; Shannon Wiener Diversity Index; SDTFs; Forest Structural Characteristics; AMF Community; Herbivorous Insects; AMF Colonization Rate; Faunal Sampling; Soil Traits; Atlantic Rain Forest; Caatinga Vegetation; Minimal Adequate Models; Northern Minas Gerais; Species Richness; Biodiversity Patterns; Average Species Richness; IBGE; Nonparametric Multidimensional Scaling; Forest Structure; Soil Fertility; Human Development Index; Successional Gradient; Dung Beetles
• ISBN: 1466512008; 9781466512009
• DOI: 10.1201/b15417-8

Seasonally dry tropical forests (SDTFs) occupy 27,367,815 ha in Brazil, representing 3.21% of the country’s territory (Sevilha et al. 2004). The delimitation of SDTFs used in this chapter follows that used by the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (IBGE 1992) and does not consider the entire caatinga biome as SDTFs, because most of the caatinga vegetation does not possess a forest structure. The Brazilian SDTFs have a naturally scattered distribution, occurring in several biomes but predominantly in the semiarid northeastern region (see Chapter 1, Figure 1.3). These ecosystemsCONTENTS5.1 Introduction ... 69 5.2 Materials and Methods ... 715.2.1 Sampling Design ... 71 5.2.2 Forest Structure and Composition ...72 5.2.3 Soil and Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi Sampling ... 73 5.2.4 Faunal Sampling ... 73 5.2.5 Data Analyses ... 745.3 Results and Discussion ... 74 5.3.1 Soil Composition ... 74 5.3.2 Biodiversity Patterns ...77 5.3.3 Successional Patterns ...77