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Human disturbance is the major driver of vegetation changes in the Caatinga dry forest region

Drastic changes in vegetation structure caused by exceeding ecological thresholds have fueled the interest in tropical forest responses to climate and land-use changes. Here, we examine the potential successional trajectories experienced by the largest dry tropical forest region in South America, dr...

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Autores principales: Araujo, Helder F. P., Canassa, Nathália F., Machado, Célia C. C., Tabarelli, Marcelo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10611708/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37891196
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-45571-9
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author Araujo, Helder F. P.
Canassa, Nathália F.
Machado, Célia C. C.
Tabarelli, Marcelo
author_facet Araujo, Helder F. P.
Canassa, Nathália F.
Machado, Célia C. C.
Tabarelli, Marcelo
author_sort Araujo, Helder F. P.
collection PubMed
description Drastic changes in vegetation structure caused by exceeding ecological thresholds have fueled the interest in tropical forest responses to climate and land-use changes. Here, we examine the potential successional trajectories experienced by the largest dry tropical forest region in South America, driven by climate conditions and human disturbance. We built potential distribution models for vertebrate taxa associated with forest or shrub habitats to estimate natural vegetation cover. Distribution patterns were compared to current vegetation across the entire region to identify distinct forest degradation levels. Our results indicate the region has climatic and soil conditions suitable for more forest cover than is currently found, even in some areas with limited precipitation. However, 11.04% of natural cover persists across such an immense region, with only 4.34% consisting of forest cover. Forest degradation is characterized by the dramatic expansion of shrubland (390%), farming, and non-vegetation cover due to changes in land-use, rather than climatic conditions. Although different climate conditions have been the principal drivers for natural forest distribution in the region, the forest seems unable to resist the consequences of land-use changes, particularly in lower precipitation areas. Therefore, land-use change has exceeded the ecological thresholds for the persistence of forests, while climate change may exacerbate vegetation-type transitions.
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spelling pubmed-106117082023-10-29 Human disturbance is the major driver of vegetation changes in the Caatinga dry forest region Araujo, Helder F. P. Canassa, Nathália F. Machado, Célia C. C. Tabarelli, Marcelo Sci Rep Article Drastic changes in vegetation structure caused by exceeding ecological thresholds have fueled the interest in tropical forest responses to climate and land-use changes. Here, we examine the potential successional trajectories experienced by the largest dry tropical forest region in South America, driven by climate conditions and human disturbance. We built potential distribution models for vertebrate taxa associated with forest or shrub habitats to estimate natural vegetation cover. Distribution patterns were compared to current vegetation across the entire region to identify distinct forest degradation levels. Our results indicate the region has climatic and soil conditions suitable for more forest cover than is currently found, even in some areas with limited precipitation. However, 11.04% of natural cover persists across such an immense region, with only 4.34% consisting of forest cover. Forest degradation is characterized by the dramatic expansion of shrubland (390%), farming, and non-vegetation cover due to changes in land-use, rather than climatic conditions. Although different climate conditions have been the principal drivers for natural forest distribution in the region, the forest seems unable to resist the consequences of land-use changes, particularly in lower precipitation areas. Therefore, land-use change has exceeded the ecological thresholds for the persistence of forests, while climate change may exacerbate vegetation-type transitions. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-10-27 /pmc/articles/PMC10611708/ /pubmed/37891196 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-45571-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Araujo, Helder F. P.
Canassa, Nathália F.
Machado, Célia C. C.
Tabarelli, Marcelo
Human disturbance is the major driver of vegetation changes in the Caatinga dry forest region
title Human disturbance is the major driver of vegetation changes in the Caatinga dry forest region
title_full Human disturbance is the major driver of vegetation changes in the Caatinga dry forest region
title_fullStr Human disturbance is the major driver of vegetation changes in the Caatinga dry forest region
title_full_unstemmed Human disturbance is the major driver of vegetation changes in the Caatinga dry forest region
title_short Human disturbance is the major driver of vegetation changes in the Caatinga dry forest region
title_sort human disturbance is the major driver of vegetation changes in the caatinga dry forest region
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10611708/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37891196
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-45571-9
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