Protection status as determinant of carbon stock drivers in Cerrado sensu stricto

Abstract

Aims Natural vegetation plays an important role in global carbon cycling and storage. Thus, the Cerrado (Brazilian savannah) is considered a carbon sink because of its intrinsic characteristics. Our aim was to evaluate how the aboveground biomass and biodiversity relationship change between three Cerrado remnants with different protection status: a ‘control area’ (Legal Reserve area), a protected area (PA) and a non-protected area (Non-PA). Methods All three studied fragments are situated in northern Minas Gerais state, Brazil. We estimated the aboveground carbon stocks based on the forest inventory. We also measured three dimensions of biodiversity metrics for each plot: functional trait dominance, taxonomic diversity and functional diversity. The following functional traits were evaluated for the species: wood density, maximum diameter and seed size. We carried out generalized linear models seeking to evaluate how carbon stocks, community-weighted mean (CWM) trait values, species richness and diversity, and functional diversity indices differ among the remnants. Important Findings The Cerrado areas without protection status had lower carbon stocks, species richness, species diversity, functional richness and functional dispersion, whereas both PA and Non-PA had lower CWM maximum diameter and seed size compared with the Legal Reserve control area. Generalized linear models showed that carbon stocks, species and functional richness metrics were correlated within and across sites, and thus, species richness could serve as a good proxy for functional richness and carbon stocks. The carbon stocks were positively driven by species richness and CWM maximum diameter, while they were negatively driven by functional dispersion. Functional richness, species diversity and CWM seed size appeared in the set of best models, but with no significant direct effect on carbon stocks. Thus, we concluded that absence of protection in the Cerrado areas decreases both species richness and carbon stocks.

The Role of Plant Functional Diversity in Regulating Soil Organic Carbon Stocks under Different Grazing Intensities in Temperate Grassland, China

“…This study demonstrated that the relative importance of different components of functional diversity in affecting soil C stocks shifted among different grazing intensities. These results corroborate the findings of the previous work in tropical and temperate forests concerning land-use intensities [45,47].…”

Drivers of carbon stocks in Araucaria forests

“…Positive in uence of forest protection status on aboveground carbon Contrary to general expectations [23], the amount of AGC was not greater in the protected areas due to high taxonomic diversity because the H' and S were similar at both sites. This similarity between protected and non-protected areas is a paradox for the conservation of subtropical forests in southern Brazil [54].…”

“…Our study had some limitations because ecosystem diversity, structural attributes, and processes can vary along environmental gradients [9]. First, in addition to stand characteristics, other unassessed factors may have in uenced the carbon stocks, such as stand age, successional stage, functional and phylogenetic diversity, human disturbance level, land-use history, the surrounding landscape, climate, soil, and topographical aspects [20,23,24,25,49,50]. Second, although our sampling area was large, we only investigated two sampling sites-one under protected status (national forest), the other not protected (urban forest).…”

“…Although the diversity-biomass relationship is common in several Brazilian forest types [23,24,25], it is less evident in subtropical forests [26], and especially mixed forests, likely due to the dominance of A. angustifolia in all successional stages [27]. In addition, the carbon storage capacity and its correlation with biodiversity in subtropical Brazilian Atlantic Forests is information necessary to future conservation efforts that remains poorly understood [14].…”

Decadal Fire Effects on the Structure, Composition, Diversity, and Aboveground Carbon Stocks of a Neotropical Savanna

“…Savanna ecosystems in the cerrado are particularly influenced by the availability of water and nutrients, with fire as an agent for maintaining the biomass gradient in this morphoclimatic domain [13,14], altering the vegetation composition and structure. More recently, these savanna ecosystems have been investigated to estimate aboveground biomass because of the complexity of the expansion of anthropogenic activities that tend to affect their different formations [15,16] and to predict information about their nutrient and carbon cycles [15,16].…”