Relationships between plant species richness and soil pH at the level of biome and ecoregion in Brazil

Abstract

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Effect factors of terrestrial acidification in Brazil for use in Life Cycle Impact Assessment

“…These two behavior patterns observed at biome level were also observed at ecoregion level (see Figure S1, ESM). For most ecoregions (mainly those that compose the biomes Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests and Tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas and shrublands) the optimum pH for range-restricted species is lower than the optimum pH for the entire list of species (Crespo-Mendes et al 2018), causing a slight displacement of the PXF curves towards acid pH.…”

“…A comprehensive and harmonized data inventory of terrestrial plants in Brazil reported by Crespo-Mendes et al (2018) was used to estimate the potential losses of terrestrial plants species richness as a result of exposure to acidifying substances. Data were collected based on records provided by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF 2017) and processed by using the Geographic Information System (GIS) into a georeferenced inventory of 29712 terrestrial plant species with a harmonized nomenclature.…”

“…Data about species richness distributions as function of the soil pH at country, biome and ecoregion levels were reported in Crespo-Mendes et al (2018). The distributions were obtained by matching the georeferenced locations of terrestrial plant species (Section 2.1.1) with their associated soil pH values (Section 2.1.2) and by assigning to each species a range of soil pH defined by the lowest and highest pH values at which the species has been recorded.…”

“…Following the approach used for modeling the range-restricted species). Some of them may also occur outside Brazil and thus not be truly endemic to the ecoregion, but due to the size of the country and its high species diversity, many of the thus defined range-restricted species will be truly endemic (Crespo-Mendes et al 2018). Decreasing the species richness of range-restricted plant species thus indicates the potential extinction of unique species.…”

“…In Azevedo et al (2013) spatially-resolved EFs are calculated based on the relationships between changes in plant species richness and soil pH variations, taking occurrences of 2409 plant species worldwide attributed to 13 terrestrial global biomes. Considering the species diversity in a country like Brazil, which has more than 30000 species of plants (Forzza et al 2012;Crespo-Mendes et al 2018), one may question the representativeness of the EF calculated in Azevedo et al (2013) and Roy et al (2014), thus calling for more comprehensive studies.…”