Landscape-scale forest cover drives the predictability of forest regeneration across the Neotropics.

ABSTRACT: Abandonment of agricultural lands promotes the global expansion of secondary forests, which are critical for preserving biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services. Such roles largely depend, however, on two essential successional attributes, trajectory and recovery rate, which are expected to depend on landscape-scale forest cover in nonlinear ways. Using a multi-scale approach and a large vegetation dataset (843 plots, 3511 tree species) from 22 secondary forest chronosequences distributed across the Neotropics, we show that successional trajectories of woody plant species richness, stem density and basal area are less predictable in landscapes (4 km radius) with intermediate (40-60%) forest cover than in landscapes with high (greater than 60%) forest cover. This supports theory su

SUBMITTER: Arroyo-Rodriguez V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9832557 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature