Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T20:04:51.907Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Effect of distance from edge on exotic grass abundance in tropical dry forests bordering pastures in Ecuador

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2017

Hannah Ruth Lyons-Galante  and
Xavier Haro-Carrión
Hannah Ruth Lyons-Galante*
Affiliation:
Harvard University Center for the Environment, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Xavier Haro-Carrión
Affiliation:
School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA Department of Geography, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

We compared exotic pasture grass cover near the edges of 20–25-y-old secondary forests (N = 8) with those of mature forests (N = 8), bordering actively grazed pastures on the Pacific Coast of Ecuador. We estimated grass cover in 224 1 × 3-m plots along transects that ran from the pasture edge into forest interiors (11–44 m). Using a spline regression, we divided the transects into three segments: exterior (in the pasture), edge and interior (in the forest). With a stepwise regression, we tested the effect of transect section, forest type and distance from edge on grass cover. Forest type, distance from edge, interior transect section and the combined effect of distance from edge in both the interior and exterior sections explained variation in grass cover. Grass abundance was higher and penetrated further into secondary than mature forests. Edge proximity and differences in forest canopy openness likely favours recruitment and persistence of pasture grasses.

Keywords

edge effectfragmented landscapesland use legacypasture abandonmentregenerationsecondary forestspline regression
Type
Short Communication
Information
Journal of Tropical Ecology , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , March 2017 , pp. 170 - 173
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

Authors contributed equally to this work.

References

LITERATURE CITED

AIDE, T. M. & CAVELIER, J. 1994. Barriers to lowland tropical forest restoration in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia. Restoration Ecology 2:219–229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
AIDE, T. M., ZIMMERMAN, J. K., PASCARELLA, J. B., RIVERA, L. & MARCANO-VEGA, H. 2000. Forest regeneration in a chronosequence of tropical abandoned pastures: implications for restoration ecology. Restoration Ecology 8:328–338.Google Scholar
BALSHI, M. S., MCGUIRE, A. D., DUFFY, P., FLANNIGAN, M., WALSH, J. & MELILLO, J. 2009. Assessing the response of area burned to changing climate in western boreal North America using a Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS) approach. Global Change Biology 15:578–600.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
D'ANTONIO, C. M. & VITOUSEK, P. M. 1992. Biological invasions by exotic grasses, the grass/fire cycle, and global change. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 23:63–87.Google Scholar
DE KONING, F., AGUIÑAGA, M., BRAVO, M., CHIU, M., LASCANO, M., LOZADA, T. & SUAREZ, L. 2011. Bridging the gap between forest conservation and poverty alleviation: the Ecuadorian Socio Bosque program. Environmental Science and Policy 14:531–542.Google Scholar
EWERS, R. M. & DIDHAM, R. K. 2005. Confounding factors in the detection of species responses to habitat fragmentation. Biological Reviews 81:117–142.Google Scholar
GRISCOM, H. P. & ASHTON, M. S. 2011. Restoration of dry tropical forests in Central America: a review of pattern and process. Forest Ecology and Management 261:1564–1579.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
GRISCOM, H. P., GRISCOM, B. W. & ASHTON, M. S. 2009. Forest regeneration from pasture in the dry tropics of Panama: effects of cattle, exotic grass, and forested riparia. Restoration Ecology 17:117–126.Google Scholar
GUARIGUATA, M. R. & OSTERTAG, R. 2001. Neotropical secondary forest succession: changes in structural and functional characteristics. Forest Ecology and Management 148:185–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
HARPER, K. A., MACDONALD, S. E., BURTON, P. J., CHEN, J., BROSOFSKE, K. D., SAUNDERS, S. C., EUSKIRCHEN, E. S., ROBERTS, D., JAITEH, M. S. & ESSEEN, P.-A. 2005. Edge influence on forest structure and composition in fragmented landscapes. Conservation Biology 19:768–782.Google Scholar
HAYES, A. F. & CAI, L. 2007. Using heteroskedasticity-consistent standard error estimators in OLS regression: an introduction and software implementation. Behavior Research Methods 39:709–722.Google Scholar
HOLL, K. D. 2002. Tropical moist forest. Pp. 539–558 in Perrow, M. R. & Davy, A. J. (eds). Handbook of ecological restoration. Vol. 2: Restoration in practice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
JANZEN, D. H. 2002. Tropical dry forest: Area de Conservación Guanacaste, north-western Costa Rica. Pp. 559–583 in Perrow, M. R. & Davy, A. J. (eds). Handbook of ecological restoration. Vol. 2: Restoration in practice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
JØRGENSEN, P. M. & LÉON-YÁNEZ, S. (eds.). 1999. Catalogue of the vascular plants of Ecuador/Catálogo de las plantas vasculares del Ecuador. Missouri Botanical Garden Press, St. Louis. 1181 pp.Google Scholar
MARSH, L. & CORMIER, D. R. 2001. Spline regression models. Sage, Thousand Oaks. 69 pp.Google Scholar
MESQUITA, R. DE C. G., MASSOCA, P. E. DOS S., JAKOVAC, C. C., BENTOS, T. V. & WILLIAMSON, G. B. 2015. Amazon rain forest succession: stochasticity or land-use legacy? BioScience 65:849–861.Google Scholar
MUGGEO, V. M. R. 2003. Estimating regression models with unknown break-points. Statistics in Medicine 22:3055–3071.Google Scholar
MUGGEO, V. M. R. 2008. Segmented: an R package to fit regression models with broken-line relationships. R News 8:20–25.Google Scholar
MYERS, N., MITTERMEIER, R. A., MITTERMEIER, C. G., DA FONSECA, G. A. B., & KENT, J. 2000. Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities. Nature 403:853–858.Google Scholar
NEPSTAD, D. C., UHL, C. & SERRÃO, E. A. S. 1990. Surmounting barriers to forest regeneration in abandoned, highly degraded pastures: a case study from Paragominas, Para, Brazil. Pp. 215–229 in Anderson, A. B. (ed.). Alternatives to deforestation: steps toward sustainable use of the Amazon rain forest. Columbia University Press, New York.Google Scholar
RWEYEMAMU, M., ROEDER, P., MACKAY, D., SUMPTION, K., BROWNLIE, J., LEFORBAN, Y., VALARCHER, J.-F., KNOWLES, N. J. & SARAIVA, V. 2008. Epidemiological patterns of foot-and-mouth disease worldwide: global FMD epidemiology. Transboundary and Emerging Diseases 55:57–72.Google Scholar
SCHOLES, R. J. & ARCHER, S. R. 1997. Tree-grass interactions in savannas. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 28:517–544.Google Scholar
SUN, D. & DICKSON, G. R. 1996. The competition effect of Brachiaria decumbens on the early growth of direct-seeded trees of Alphitonia petriei in tropical North Australia. Biotropica 28:272–276.Google Scholar
UHL, C., BUSCHBACHER, R. & SERRÃO, E. A. S. 1988. Abandoned pastures in Eastern Amazonia. I. Patterns of plant succession. Journal of Ecology 76:663–681.Google Scholar
VELDMAN, J. W. & PUTZ, F. E. 2011. Grass-dominated vegetation, not species-diverse natural savanna, replaces degraded tropical forests on the southern edge of the Amazon Basin. Biological Conservation 144:1419–1429.Google Scholar
WILLIAMS, D. G. & BARUCH, Z. 2000. African grass invasion in the Americas: ecosystem consequences and the role of ecophysiology. Biological Invasions 2:123–140.Google Scholar
ZIMMERMAN, J. K., PASCARELLA, J. B. & AIDE, T. M. 2000. Barriers to forest regeneration in an abandoned pasture in Puerto Rico. Restoration Ecology 8:350–360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar