About
58
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Introduction
Rita C. G. Mesquita currently works at the Coordenação de Dinâmica Ambiental (CDAM), Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia in Manaus, Brazil. Rita does research in Ecology. She is part of the '2ndFOR (Secondary Forests)' Network, and her current project is Pioneiras Project, monitoring secondary forests chronosequences in the Amazon for the past 20 years. She is also involved with outreach and science popularization in the region.
Publications
Publications (58)
Amazon forests are being degraded by myriad anthropogenic disturbances, altering ecosystem and climate function. We analyzed the effects of a range of land‐use and climate‐change disturbances on fine‐scale canopy structure using a large database of profiling canopy lidar collected from disturbed and mature Amazon forest plots. At most of the distur...
Naturally regenerating forests or secondary forests (SFs) are a promising strategy for restoring large expanses of tropical forests at low cost and with high environmental benefits. This expectation is supported by the high resilience of tropical forests after natural disturbances, yet this resilience can be severely reduced by human impacts. Asses...
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...
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...
Secondary forests are increasingly important components of human‐modified landscapes in the tropics. Successional pathways, however, can vary enormously across and within landscapes, with divergent regrowth rates, vegetation structure and species composition. While climatic and edaphic conditions drive variations across regions, land‐use history pl...
1.The recovery capacity and the successional pathways of tropical forests after anthropogenic disturbance vary considerably and may depend on prior land‐use type and intensity. It is still unclear if forests subjected to high intensity impact, such as periodically burned pastures, are capable of restoring their original functional properties. 2.Thi...
Assessing the persistent impacts of fragmentation on aboveground structure of tropical forests is essential to understanding the consequences of land use change for carbon storage and other ecosystem functions. We investigated the influence of edge distance and fragment size on canopy structure, aboveground woody biomass (AGB), and AGB turnover in...
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...
Deforestation of tropical forests has contributed to the formation of fragmented landscapes, surrounded mainly by a matrix of secondary forests, pastures and agriculture. In this study we evaluated the fragment-area effects on the density, diversity and composition of the soil seed bank. Fragments of primary forest of different sizes (1, 10 and 100...
We synthesize findings from one of the world's largest and longest-running experimental investigations, the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project (BDFFP). Spanning an area of ∼1000 km² in central Amazonia, the BDFFP was initially designed to evaluate the effects of fragment area on rainforest biodiversity and ecological processes. However...
Significance
Climate change may alter the distribution of biomes in tropical regions with implications for biodiversity and ecosystem services. Here we reveal that if the Amazon region becomes drier as predicted, forests may collapse first on seasonally inundated areas due to their vulnerability to wildfires. The widespread distribution of floodpla...
The magnitude of the carbon sink in second-growth forests is expected to vary with successional biomass dynamics resulting from tree growth, recruitment, and mortality, and with the effects of climate on these dynamics. We compare aboveground biomass dynamics of dry and wet Neotropical forests, based on monitoring data gathered over 3–16 years in f...
We synthesize findings from the world’s largest and longest-running experimental study of habitat fragmentation, in central Amazonia. Over the past 36 years, 11 forest fragments ranging from 1 ha to 100 ha in size have experienced a wide array of ecological changes. Edge effects have been a dominant driver of fragment dynamics, strongly affecting f...
Secondary succession in the tropics can follow alternative pathways. Land-use history is known to engender alternative successional communities, but the underlying mechanisms driving and sustaining divergence remain unclear. In this study we aim to answer the following questions: (1) does previous land use act as a filter for species composition in...
Regrowth of tropical secondary forests following complete or nearly complete removal of forest vegetation actively stores carbon in aboveground biomass, partially counterbalancing carbon emissions from deforestation, forest degradation, burning of fossil fuels, and other anthropogenic sources. We estimate the age and spatial extent of lowland secon...
Land-use change occurs nowhere more rapidly than in the tropics, where the imbalance between deforestation and forest regrowth has large consequences for the global carbon cycle. However, considerable uncertainty remains about the rate of biomass recovery in secondary forests, and how these rates are influenced by climate, landscape, and prior land...
Swidden cultivation is one of the most widespread agricultural systems in the tropics. Due to socio-economic changes, swiddens are either abandoned, substituted for other agricultural systems, or intensified. In the region of the middle Amazon river, Brazil, the high market demand for cassava flour (farinha) combined with land scarcity is inducing...
Land-use practices can dramatically shift the trajectories of rain forest recovery. In a 25-year study, Amazon rain forest
regenerated following deforestation as long as seed availability and seedling recruitment were not interrupted. In contrast,
rain forest converted to cattle pastures via cutting and burning prior to abandonment diverted success...
1.Successional gradients are ubiquitous in nature, yet few studies have systematically examined the evolutionary origins of taxa that specialize at different successional stages. Here we quantify successional habitat specialization in Neotropical forest trees and evaluate its evolutionary lability along a precipitation gradient. Theoretically, succ...
Significance
Although forest succession has been approached as a predictable process, successional trajectories vary widely, even among nearby stands with similar environmental conditions and disturbance histories. We quantified predictability and uncertainty during tropical forest succession using dynamical models describing the interactions among...
Following perturbation, different assemblages that originate under the same abiotic conditions initiate successional pathways that may continue to diverge or converge toward an eventual climax. Forest regeneration in the Central Amazon begins with alternative successional pathways associated with prior land use. In a 12-yr study of secondary forest...
Background: Plant succession and community assembly following different land-use histories in the Amazon Basin are poorly understood. Aims: Changes in woody vegetation were monitored across chronosequences of abandoned pastures and abandoned clearcuts in order to compare their successional patterns. Methods: In chronosequences, initially 5–19 years...
Background: The tradeoff between seed mass and seed number per plant is widely established for different taxa, guilds, and communities. Relative to primary forest species, pioneer species generally produce large numbers of small seeds. Aims: We tested if the relationship between seed mass and seed number was connected to the fruit variables – namel...
Secondary forests accounted for over one-third (266.000 km 2) of the total deforested area in the Legal Amazon by 2008. This study analyzed the spatial and temporal dynamics of secondary forests in Apuí (AM), Brazil, a municipality in which the expansion of cattle ranching has caused substantial increases in deforestation. A multi temporal series o...
Land use history is a primary driver of secondary succession in the Central Amazon, resulting in the establishment of distinct trajectories differing in structure, composition, biomass and dynamics. Intensive use with prescribed fire to maintain pastures compromises the regenerative potential of land which, once abandoned, is colonized by few speci...
Environmental services in the Amazon include climate regulation, hydrological fluxes, ecological processes mediated by biodiversity, such as pollination, decomposition, and nutrient cycling, and Carbon sequestration and storage. When primary forest is clearcut, these services are lost, but the regeneration of altered and degraded areas could help t...
Secondary forests or " capoeiras " accounted for 20% of the total deforested area in the Brazilian Amazon in 2006. This study relates land use history and biomass accumulation in a chronosequence of secondary forests in the Apuí municipality, one of the deforestation hotspots in the Amazon. Aboveground live biomass (ABGB) was estimated for trees in...
The phylogenetic structure of communities can reveal forces shaping community assembly, but the vast majority of work on phylogenetic community structure has been conducted in mature ecosystems. Here, we present an analysis of the phylogenetic structure of three Neotropical rain forest communities undergoing succession. In each site, the net relate...
Background: In central Amazonia, previous low intensity land use engenders succession dominated by Cecropia spp. which proceeds at high rates; however, at higher intensity of use succession is arrested and dominated by Vismia spp. over the long-term. Factors driving these two successional pathways are unknown.Aims: We aim to elucidate seedling grow...
Succession in the Brazilian Amazon depends on prior land-use history. Abandoned clearcuts become dominated by Cecropia trees and exhibit species replacements characteristic of natural succession in forest lightgaps. In contrast, abandoned pastures are dominated by Vismia trees that inhibit natural succession for a decade or more. Here we explore ho...
Based on eight years of annual censuses in secondary forests in central Amazonia, we compared successional dynamics in areas presenting alternative states due to different land use histories. Sites that had been clearcut without subsequent use are dominated by the pioneer genus Cecropia, but their understory is characterized by a diverse species as...
This study characterizes the flowering and fruiting phenology of the 13 most common pioneer tree species in early successional forests of the Central Amazon. For each species, 30 individuals, 10 each in three secondary forests, were monitored monthly for four years at the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project, north of Manaus. Five specie...
Fragmentation that alters mutualistic relationships between plants and frugivorous animals may reduce the seed dispersal of trees. We examined the effects of forest fragmentation on the distributions of seeds and seedlings of a Central Amazon endemic tree, Duckeodendron cestroides. In the dry seasons of 2002–2004, seeds and first-year seedlings wer...
The responses of plant–animal interactions to forest fragmentation can vary. We hypothesized that large-seeded plant species would be more susceptible to forest fragmentation than small-seeded species because large-seeded species rely on a few, extinction prone dispersers. We compared seed dispersal of the large-seeded, mammal dispersed Duckeodendr...
Amazonian farmers and ranchers use fire to clear land for agriculture and pasture as part of extensive land-use strategies that have deforested 500 000 km(2) over the past 25 years. Ash from burning biomass fertilizes crops and pastures, but declining productivity often occurs after a few years, generally leading to land abandonment and further cle...
The harvesting of non-timber forest products has been proposed as an alternative to timber harvesting that can increase rural income while having a reduced impact on forest structure. However, surprisingly little is known about the biological consequences of harvesting these products. We conducted a 3-year experiment in which we simulated the stem...
In fragmented tropical landscapes, among the most pervasive causes of ecological change are edge effects – diverse ecological alterations associated with the abrupt, artificial boundaries of forest fragments (Laurance & Bierregaard 1997, Lovejoy et al. 1986, Turner 1996). A striking edge effect in fragmented Amazonian forests is chronically elevate...
A composição florística de uma floresta secundária dominada por Vismia na Amazônia central foi estudada e comparada de acordo com sua composição ao banco de sementes no solo. A área apresentou um total de 20 espécies arbóreas, sendo Vismia o gênero dominante em indíce de valor de importância, densidade relativa e área basal. O banco de sementes col...
Summary • Successional pathways were evaluated in two Amazonian secondary forest communities with different land-use histories. Sites which had been clearcut without subsequent use were dominated after 6–10 years by the pioneer genus Cecropia (Moraceae), whereas those used for pasture before abandonment were dominated by the pioneer genus Vismia (C...
Gap formation is a critical process for plant establishment that may be absent or infrequent in second-growth forests, negatively influencing their ability to become diverse mature forest. I simulated treefall gaps within a 10-year-old secondary forest established on a clear-cut area, because cut areas may have a greater potential for economic expl...
Little is known about factors that cause spatial variability in edge effects, the diverse physical and biotic changes associated with the abrupt boundaries of fragmented forests. We examined the influence of three types of surrounding vegetation (cattle pastures, Cecropia-dominated regrowth, and Vismia-dominated regrowth), on edge-related tree mort...
Estimates of the sequestering of carbon by secondary forests - which occupy almost half the deforested area of the Brazilian Amazon - will be improved by the use of accurate allometric relationships for non-destructive measurement of standing biomass and by an evaluation of the suitability of existing equations for application in secondary forest....
In their policy commentary “Logging and tropical forest conservation ( Science 's Compass, 19 June, p. [1899][1]), Ian A. Bowles et al . take a position against lifting the World Bank's ban on investing in the logging of primary tropical rain forests ([1][2]), and they criticize the usefulness of
Different proportions of tree canopy cover in a second-growth forest were removed to determine the effect of canopy opening on the carbon cycle of a 10-y-old tropical rain forest dominated by Cecropia species. Understorey vegetation was left intact. Mean maximum monthly temperature increased in the 50 and 100% cut areas relative to 0% canopy remova...
Projects
Projects (5)
This is a synthesis project aiming to
(i) define a concept of ecological integrity of secondary forests;
(ii) identify ecological indicators to assess ecological integrity from plot data; and
(iii) identify remote sensing indicators to assess ecological integrity of NRF at large scales.
By synthesizing the state of the art knowledge on forest succession and remote sensing assessments we intend to plant the seed for a monitoring platform to assess the quality of natural regeneration in the Brazilian Amazon and beyond. Such a platform will significantly improve national estimates of ecosystem services provision (e.g.carbon sequestration) and support conservation and restoration planning in the Brazilian Amazon.
Science dissemination, ecotourism and conservation in the Amazon. This is a collaborative project with the University of Kyoto in Japan, and implements a concept of field museum or territory museum, where visitors, students and researchers are in direct contact with the natural environment and the native wildlife. The field camp is located at the Alto Cuieiras station, which is one of INPA´s visiting stations (the other is Bosque da Ciência in Manaus).
