Daniel Piotto

Federal University of Southern Bahia · Centro de Ciências Agroflorestais

The study analyzed the technical and environmental feasibility of using Erythrina poeppigiana to produce plywood with different adhesives: phenol-formaldehyde (PF), urea-formaldehyde (UF), and castor oil-based polyurethane (PUA). The physical and mechanical properties of the plywood were evaluated, including apparent density, moisture content, wate...

The study aimed to evaluate the growth potential of several Atlantic Forest species in South Bahia, displayed in high dense grid and select the best trees through selection indexes. The experiment was carried out in the Comissão Executiva do Plano da Lavoura Cacaueira (CEPLAC) located in the South of Bahia state, Brazil. A total of 44 Atlantic Fore...

Native timber production offers a promising pathway to make large-scale tropical forest restoration financially viable. However, there are still many gaps in knowledge on this subject. This study develops species-specific growth models for three valuable and threatened native timber species from the Brazilian Atlantic Forest – Cariniana legalis , D...

The density of wood is a key indicator of the carbon investment strategies of trees, impacting productivity and carbon storage. Despite its importance, the global variation in wood density and its environmental controls remain poorly understood, preventing accurate predictions of global forest carbon stocks. Here we analyse information from 1.1 mil...

Projects of reforestation for sustainable production of tropical timber and for nature-based solutions must be based on reliable growth models. However, there is still a big gap in knowledge about the growth in diameter for native and exotic tropical timber species. Here, we used diameter growth data from 100 tropical tree species in silvicultural...

The emergence of alternative stable states in forest systems has significant implications for the functioning and structure of the terrestrial biosphere, yet empirical evidence remains scarce. Here, we combine global forest biodiversity observations and simulations to test for alternative stable states in the presence of evergreen and deciduous for...

Plant diversity effects on community productivity often increase over time. Whether the strengthening of diversity effects is caused by temporal shifts in species-level overyielding (i.e., higher species-level productivity in diverse communities compared with monocultures) remains unclear. Here, using data from 65 grassland and forest biodiversity...

The density of wood is a key indicator of trees’ carbon investment strategies, impacting productivity and carbon storage. Despite its importance, the global variation in wood density and its environmental controls remain poorly understood, preventing accurate predictions of global forest carbon stocks. Here, we analyze information from 1.1 million...

Aim To determine the relationships between the functional trait composition of forest communities and environmental gradients across scales and biomes and the role of species relative abundances in these relationships. Location Global. Time period Recent. Major taxa studied Trees. Methods We integrated species abundance records from worldw...

Purpose of Review Forests support most global terrestrial biodiversity and contribute to the livelihood of billions of people, but these and other benefits are in jeopardy due to global change. This leads to questions, such as how to address the challenges of global change in forest management, given the lack of knowledge and deep uncertainty about...

Forests are a substantial terrestrial carbon sink, but anthropogenic changes in land use and climate have considerably reduced the scale of this system¹. Remote-sensing estimates to quantify carbon losses from global forests2–5 are characterized by considerable uncertainty and we lack a comprehensive ground-sourced evaluation to benchmark these est...

The global demand for forest products will increase in the coming decades due to population growth and increasing environmental awareness. Therefore, the production of forest products through multifunctional forest restoration could be a meaningful opportunity for large-scale restoration while promoting sustainability and vegetation recovery. We co...

Forest restoration has gained traction as a solution to mitigate climate change, contribute to biodiversity conservation, and support forest livelihoods. Yet there is limited evidence on the spatial locations where restoration is most likely to occur. In landscapes that primarily contain private properties, assessing the likelihood of restoration c...

Understanding what controls global leaf type variation in trees is crucial for comprehending their role in terrestrial ecosystems, including carbon, water and nutrient dynamics. Yet our understanding of the factors influencing forest leaf types remains incomplete, leaving us uncertain about the global proportions of needle-leaved, broadleaved, ever...

Determining the drivers of non-native plant invasions is critical for managing native ecosystems and limiting the spread of invasive species1,2. Tree invasions in particular have been relatively overlooked, even though they have the potential to transform ecosystems and economies3,4. Here, leveraging global tree databases5-7, we explore how the phy...

1. Biodiversity is an important component of natural ecosystems, with higher species richness often correlating with an increase in ecosystem productivity. Yet, this relationship varies substantially across environments, typically becoming less pronounced at high levels of species richness. However, species richness alone cannot reflect all importa...

The recovery of soil conditions is crucial for successful ecosystem restoration and, hence, for achieving the goals of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Here, we assess how soils resist forest conversion and agricultural land use, and how soils recover during subsequent tropical forest succession on abandoned agricultural fields. Our overarch...

Native tropical forests have been increasingly modified in different land uses. Many of these lands have regrown into secondary forests and agroforestry systems. In this study, we investigate how different forest covers in a working landscape contribute to aboveground biomass in the southern region of Bahia, Brazil. We used Generalized Linear Model...

Native tree species and species mixtures are key elements for biodiversity conservation by forest plantations. Yet, introduced species planted in monoculture still dominate plantation forests in many regions around the world and especially in the tropics. In Costa Rica and Panamá, Tectona grandis (teak) is the most planted species, occupying 49% an...

The latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG) is one of the most recognized global patterns of species richness exhibited across a wide range of taxa. Numerous hypotheses have been proposed in the past two centuries to explain LDG, but rigorous tests of the drivers of LDGs have been limited by a lack of high-quality global species richness data. Here we...

The regions between the tropics provide climatic characteristics that contribute to the formation of unique vegetation typologies, the Tropical Forests. It is estimated that these forests are home to about 50 000 tree species. The Atlantic Forest, located mostly on the Brazilian coast is an example of the richness of phanerophytes inside an importa...

Forests that regrow naturally on abandoned fields are important for restoring biodiversity and ecosystem services, but can they also preserve the distinct regional tree floras? Using the floristic composition of 1215 early successional forests (≤20 years) in 75 human-modified landscapes across the Neotropic realm, we identified 14 distinct floristi...

Litter production plays an important role in the functioning of the ecosystem, providing several ecosystem services, such as nutrients cycling and carbon storage. We studied litter production patterns and its relationship with forest structure over a chronosequence of secondary forests in southern Bahia, Brazil. In the study area, 15 pairs of matur...

One of the most fundamental questions in ecology is how many species inhabit the Earth. However, due to massive logistical and financial challenges and taxonomic difficulties connected to the species concept definition, the global numbers of species, including those of important and well-studied life forms such as trees, still remain largely unknow...

Significance Tree diversity is fundamental for forest ecosystem stability and services. However, because of limited available data, estimates of tree diversity at large geographic domains still rely heavily on published lists of species descriptions that are geographically uneven in coverage. These limitations have precluded efforts to generate a g...

Resilient secondary tropical forests? Although deforestation is rampant across the tropics, forest has a strong capacity to regrow on abandoned lands. These “secondary” forests may increasingly play important roles in biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation, and landscape restoration. Poorter et al . analyzed the patterns of recovery i...

The Brazilian Atlantic forest is largely covered by secondary forests, mostly regenerated after the abandonment of patches previously used for shifting cultivation. A characteristic of these secondary forests is the significant timber volume from fast-growing species at ages as young as 30–40 years. In this study, we investigated changes that occur...

The recovery of tree species composition after disturbance depends on dispersal either from nearby forests or from surviving individuals within the disturbed area. Understanding the influence of proximity to mature forests on species composition of regenerating secondary forests can help in predicting the trajectory of recovery from anthropogenic d...

Our aims were to describe the role of the selective management of regenerating community (RC) on the recovery of ecosystem functions in production areas of African mahoganies under mixed stands and agroforestry systems, established on abandoned farmland. A randomized block experiment was set up with the following treatments: (T1) mixed-plantation o...

Symbiotic nitrogen fixation is a dominant source of nitrogen to many terrestrial ecosystems and thus may influence their responses to global change. High legume species diversity and abundance are thought to lead to high rates of symbiotic nitrogen fixation in Neotropical forests. However, how changes in water and nutrient availability will affect...

Native tree species and species mixtures are key elements for biodiversity conservation by forest plantations. Yet, introduced species planted in monoculture still dominate plantation forests in many regions around the world and especially in the tropics. In Costa Rica and Panam´a, Tectona grandis (teak) is the most planted species, occupying 49% a...

The Atlantic forest of Brazil is a biodiversity hotspot that retains less than 12% of its original area. In this biome, non-pioneer tree species with limited dispersal are the most impacted by recent habitat loss and fragmentation. As attempts to establish non-pioneer tree species in pastures and agricultural fields in the Atlantic forest have fail...

Besides the large areas occupied by agroforestry systems in the tropics, little is yet known about the potential for producing high quality timber in these areas. In this study, we tested the effect of three different planting densities of timber species mixed with rubber and cocoa agroforestry system on the growth and yield of Cordia alliodora, Te...

Seed arrival is a limiting factor for the regeneration of diverse tropical forests and may be an important mechanism that drives patterns of tree species’ distribution. Here we quantify spatial and seasonal variation in seed rain of secondary forests in southern Bahia, Brazil. We also examine whether secondary forest age enhances seed dispersal and...

This working paper assesses gaps in the current state of research knowledge and defines priorities for promoting silviculture with native Brazilian species.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

1. AN OVERVIEW OF SILVICULTURAL SYSTEMS WITH NATIVE SPECIES IN THE ATLANTIC FOREST OF BRAZIL 2. BIOMETRIC MODELS FOR MIXED-SPECIES PLANTATION IN THE NORTH OF ESPIRITO SANTO, BRAZIL 3. DIAMETER GROWTH MODELS FOR 35 ATLANTIC FOREST TREE SPECIES IN SILVICULTURAL TRIALS IN THE NORTH OF ESPIRITO SANTO, BRAZIL 4. EVALUATION OF THE WOOD QUALITY OF PLANTED...

Tropical forests are converted at an alarming rate for agricultural use and pastureland, but also regrow naturally through secondary succession. For successful forest restoration, it is essential to understand the mechanisms of secondary succession. These mechanisms may vary across forest types, but analyses across broad spatial scales are lacking....

The aim of this study was to explore methods to: (1) enhance coarse-scale estimates of wood volume from National Forest Inventories (NFIs) data and (2) map them at finer scales. The ‘standard’ coarse-scale estimation extrapolates wood volume from clusters to the grid cell they represent, using the cluster’s represented forested area (RFA) to predic...

2019, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited. In this Letter, the middle initial of author G. J. Nabuurs was omitted, and he should have been associated with an additional affiliation: ‘Forest Ecology and Forest Management Group, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands’ (now added as affiliation 18...

A spatially explicit global map of tree symbioses with nitrogen-fixing bacteria and mycorrhizal fungi reveals that climate variables are the primary drivers of the distribution of different types of symbiosis.

Tropical forests are converted at an alarming rate for agricultural use and pastureland, but also regrow naturally through secondary succession. For successful forest restoration, it is essential to understand the mechanisms of secondary succession. These mechanisms may vary across forest types, but analyses across broad spatial scales are lacking....

Old-growth tropical forests harbor an immense diversity of tree species but are rapidly being cleared, while secondary forests that regrow on abandoned agricultural lands increase in extent. We assess how tree species richness and composition recover during secondary succession across gradients in environmental conditions and anthropogenic disturba...

Symbiotic nitrogen fixation (SNF) makes atmospheric nitrogen biologically available and regulates carbon storage in many terrestrial ecosystems. Despite its global importance, estimates of SNF rates are highly uncertain, particularly in tropical forests where rates are assumed to be high. Here we provide a framework for evaluating the uncertainty o...

The nutrient demands of regrowing tropical forests are partly satisfied by nitrogen-fixing legume trees, but our understanding of the abundance of those species is biased towards wet tropical regions. Here we show how the abundance of Leguminosae is affected by both recovery from disturbance and large-scale rainfall gradients through a synthesis of...

Este livro é apresentado em 5 capítulos, onde no primeiro se faz uma breve revisão sobre sistemas silviculturais com espécies nativas. No segundo, apresenta modelos biométricos para altura, volume e biomassa em plantios silviculturais, com base na cubagem de 168 árvores plantadas. No terceiro, apresenta modelos de crescimento em diâmetro para 35 es...

Neste trabalho os dados de 168 árvores de plantios silviculturais com espécies nativas no norte do Espírito Santo foram utilizadas para a elaboração de modelos que descrevem a relação H-D, o volume de madeira comercial e a biomassa acima do solo das árvores individuais. (PDF) Silvicultura e Tecnologia de Espécies da Mata Atlântica: https://www.re...

Secondary forests account for more than half of tropical forests and represent a growing carbon sink, but rates of biomass accumulation vary by a factor of two or more even among plots in the same landscape. To better understand the drivers of this variability, we used airborne lidar to measure forest canopy height and estimate biomass over 4529 ha...

Carbon accumulation in tropical secondary forests may be limited in part by nitrogen (N) availability, but changes in N during tropical forest succession have rarely been quantified. We explored N cycle dynamics across a chronosequence of secondary tropical forests in the Mata Atlântica of Bahia, Brazil in order to understand how quickly the N cycl...

The effects of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning generally increase over time, but the underlying processes remain unclear. Using 26 long-term grassland and forest experimental ecosystems, we demonstrate that biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships strengthen mainly by greater increases in functioning in high-diversity communities in g...

A National Forest Inventory (NFI) encompassing the entire territory of Brazil is in progress. It is coordinated and promoted by the Brazilian Forest Service of the Ministry of Environment. In each state, the NFI collaborates with local herbaria by receiving collected plant material and performing species identification. Consultants are hired by the...

Ongoing forest fragmentation in the tropics severely reduces the ability of remaining forests to store carbon and provide ecosystem services, however, secondary regeneration could offset the impacts of forest degradation. Previous plot-based forest inventory studies have shown that secondary regeneration is promoted at remnant forest edges. However...

Brazil is the largest country in Latin America, the 5th largest country in the world and one of those with the biggest biodiversity. Despite the importance of its forest resources, until recently the country did not have a national forest assessment to support public policies and the consequent strategic projects to promote the use and conservation...

Global biodiversity and productivity The relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem productivity has been explored in detail in herbaceous vegetation, but patterns in forests are far less well understood. Liang et al. have amassed a global forest data set from >770,000 sample plots in 44 countries. A positive and consistent relationship can be...