Native tree regeneration in native tree plantations: understanding the contribution of Araucaria angustifolia to biodiversity conservation in the threatened Atlantic Forest in Argentina

Deforestation is a global process that has strongly affected the Atlantic Forest in South America, which has been recognised as a threatened biodiversity hotspot. An important proportion of deforested areas were converted to forest plantations. Araucaria angustifolia is a native tree to the Atlantic Forest, which has been largely exploited for wood production and is currently cultivated in commercial plantations. An important question is to what extent such native tree plantations can be managed to reduce biodiversity loss in a highly diverse and vulnerable forest region . We evaluated the effect of stand age, stand basal area, as a measure of stand density, and time since last logging on the density and richness of native tree regeneration in planted araucaria stands that were successively logged over 60 years, as well as the differences between successional groups in the response of plant density to stand variables. We also compared native tree species richness in planted araucaria stands to neighbouring native forest. Species richness was 71 in the planted stands (27 ha sampled) and 82 in native forest (18 ha sampled) which approximate the range of variation in species richness found in the native forests of the study area. The total abundance and species richness of native trees increased with stand age and time since last logging, but ecological groups differed in their response to such variables. Early secondary trees increased in abundance with stand age 3–8 times faster than climax or late secondary trees. Thus, the change in species composition is expected to continue for a long term. The difference in species richness between native forest and planted stands might be mainly explained by the difference in plant density. Therefore, species richness in plantations can contribute to local native tree diversity if practices that increase native tree density are implemented.     

Leaf size of woody dicots predicts ecosystem primary productivity

A key challenge in ecology is to understand the relationships between organismal traits and ecosystem processes. Here, with a novel dataset of leaf length and width for 10 480 woody dicots in China and 2374 in North America, we show that the variation in community mean leaf size is highly correlated with the variation in climate and ecosystem primary productivity, independent of plant life form. These relationships likely reflect how natural selection modifies leaf size across varying climates in conjunction with how climate influences canopy total leaf area. We find that the leaf size?primary productivity functions based on the Chinese dataset can predict productivity in North America and vice‐versa. In addition to advancing understanding of the relationship between a climate‐driven trait and ecosystem functioning, our findings suggest that leaf size can also be a promising tool in palaeoecology for scaling from fossil leaves to palaeo‐primary productivity of woody ecosystems.     

Passive restoration in Araucaria Forest: useful ecological indicators in monitoring successional advancement in exotic tree plantation landscapes

Monitoring successional advancement is a complex field involving a constant search for applied ecological indicators which facilitate monitoring of secondary forests for both active and passive restoration. In this study, the authors investigate the successional advancement of floristics and tree structure within Araucaria Forest (AF) fragments under passive restoration in a context where exotic tree plantations (mainly Pinus L. genus) dominate the landscape. The ecological indicators used were floristic dissimilarity (β‐diversity inferences), indicator species, ecological groups of species, basal area, and species abundance distribution (SAD) models (α‐diversity inferences). A total of 182 tree species belonging to 91 genera and 43 botanical families were identified. A high β diversity was verified for which each site has indicator species (for the locations CD—Dicksonia sellowiana; CO—Cryptocarya aschersoniana; and PG—Pinus taeda), where pioneer species contributed to much of the abundance. Different SAD models are useful for describing passive restoration sites in exotic tree plantation landscapes, namely Lognormal, Mandelbrot, and Zipf. SAD models together with basal area, taxonomic group (e.g. Myrtaceae assemblage), and tree abundance in ecological groups are strategic ecological indicators for monitoring successional advancement in AF.     

广东特有国家保护植物丹霞梧桐资源调查与保护研究

通过对文献、网络资源数据库(植物志、标本平台、图像库等)和专著分析考证,结合全部产地的野外实地考察,对国家II级重点保护野生植物丹霞梧桐(Firmiana danxiaensis)的分类学地位与形态特征、产地与生境、标本记录、研究进展及致危因素等进行综述,以期为该物种的保护提供科学依据。自1986年在广东仁化丹霞山采到模式标本和1987年命名丹霞梧桐以来,至今已过去30多年,其记录范围从最初的仁化县丹霞山,2014年扩展到南雄市全安镇和古市镇,再到2019年新记录的英德市英城镇和横石塘镇,生境也从丹霞地貌特有扩展至与石灰岩地貌共有。丹霞梧桐种群的保护需综合就地保护、迁地保护,以及加强科学研究等措施。     

Spatial distribution and environmental risk assessment of heavy metals identified in soil of a decommissioned uranium mining area

Abstract

The spatial distribution of six heavy metals (Cd, As, Zn, Pb, Cr, and Cu) in the soil of a decommissioned uranium mining area was investigated and their potential environmental risk was assessed. Soil samples were collected along the main riversides enclosing the mining area. The heavy metal distribution was determined by geospatial interpolation. Pearson correlation coefficient and principal component analysis were used to locate the sources of pollution which are the mine ore as natural source, and dressing plants and tailing area from human activity. The results indicate that the average concentrations of As and Cd strongly exceed the recommended EQSS (Environmental Quality Standard for Soils of China) limits at all sampling sites, whereas Zn concentrations were found to be slightly over the limit only at sampling sites close to the mining area. The concentrations of Cr, Cu and Pb were all within the recommended limits. Environmental risk was assessed using the toxicity characteristic leaching procedure defining the degree to which extend the metal is released into the solution. High leaching rates were found only for Zn and Cd, suggesting that together with its high concentrations Cd is the most toxic metal around the mining area, followed by As.     

Protected areas and prime hoverfly areas: Safe haven for hoverflies or not?

The efficiency of protected areas (PAs) has often been questioned due to global decline of biodiversity. Invertebrates, especially insects, have been historically underrepresented in conservation studies. Our study focuses on hoverflies, an important group of insect pollinators and proven to be good bioindicators. Research was focused in Serbia, one of Europe's hotspots of hoverfly diversity, with a long tradition of hoverfly research, which provided sufficient information for achieving our aims: identifying areas of high hoverfly diversity, evaluating the efficiency of PAs and prime hoverfly areas (PHAs) in the conservation of hoverflies, determining how well they cover the distribution of hoverfly species, especially those of conservation concern, and testing the importance of the size of the area for conservation of hoverfly diversity. We applied weighting of the species to help stress the importance of species of conservation concern. The results indicated that PHAs cover the areas with high hoverfly diversity better than PA networks, especially when it comes to species of conservation concern. Generalized linear model results showed that the area size was a significant predictor of number of species in both PA and PHA. This indicates that area size is key when designating new areas important for conservation, but there are also other factors that need to be taken into account, such as habitat quality or suitability. Studies like this are useful in aiding designation of new areas important for conservation of certain species and in identifying sampling gaps, which could potentially aim future research in that direction.     

Interface processes between protected and unprotected areas: A global review and ways forward

Land‐use changes and the expansion of protected areas (PAs) have amplified the interaction between protected and unprotected areas worldwide. In this context, ‘interface processes' (human–nature and cross‐boundary interactions inside and around PAs) have become central to issues around the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services. This scientific literature review aimed to explore current knowledge and research gaps on interface processes regarding terrestrial PAs. At first, 3,515 references related to the topic were extracted through a standardized search on the Web of Science and analyzed with scientometric techniques. Next, a full‐text analysis was conducted on a sample of 240 research papers. A keyword analysis revealed a wide diversity of research topics, from ‘pure' ecology to sociopolitical research. We found a bias in the geographical distribution of research, with half the papers focusing on eight countries. Additionally, we found that the spatial extent of cross‐boundary interactions was rarely assessed, preventing any clear delimitation of PA interactive zones. In the 240 research papers we scanned, we identified 403 processes that were studied. The ecological effects of PAs were well documented and appeared to be positive overall. In contrast, the effects of PAs on local communities were understudied and, according to the literature focusing on these, were very variable according to local contexts. Our findings highlight key research advances on interface processes, especially regarding the ecological outcomes of PAs, the influence of human activities on biodiversity, and PA governance issues. In contrast, main knowledge gaps concern the spatial extent of interactive zones, as well as the interactions between local people and conservation actions and how to promote synergies between them. While the review was limited to terrestrial PAs, its findings allow us to propose research priorities for tackling environmental and socioeconomic challenges in the face of a rapidly changing world.     

Linking variability of tree water use and growth with species resilience to environmental changes

Tree growth is an indicator of tree vitality and its temporal variability is linked to species resilience to environmental changes. Second-order statistics that quantify the cross-scale temporal variability of ecophysiological time series (statistical memory) could provide novel insights into species resilience. Species with high statistical memory in their tree growth may be more affected by disturbances, resulting in lower overall resilience and higher vulnerability to environmental changes. Here, we assessed the statistical memory, as quantified with the decay in standard deviation with increasing time scale, in tree water use and growth of co-occurring European larch Larix decidua and Norway spruce Picea abies along an elevational gradient in the Swiss Alps using measurements of stem radius changes, sap flow and tree-ring widths. Local-scale interspecific differences between the two conifers were further explored at the European scale using data from the International Tree-Ring Data Bank. Across the analysed elevational gradient, tree water use showed steeper variability decay with increasing time scale than tree growth, with no significant interspecific differences, highlighting stronger statistical memory in tree growth processes. Moreover, Norway spruce displayed slower decay in growth variability with increasing time scale (higher statistical memory) than European larch; a pattern that was also consistent at the European scale. The higher statistical memory in tree growth of Norway spruce in comparison to European larch is indicative of lower resilience of the former in comparison to the latter, and could potentially explain the occurrence of European larch at higher elevations at the Alpine treeline. Single metrics of resilience cannot often summarize the multifaceted aspects of ecosystem functioning, thus, second-order statistics that quantify the strength of statistical memory in ecophysiological time series could complement existing resilience indicators, facilitating the assessment of how environmental changes impact forest growth trajectories and ecosystem services.