Anthropogenic impacts on Cerrado conservation and biodiversity and carbon restoration of Atlantic Forest
Authors:   , Coelho Alex Josélio Pires 
Published: June 2022

Anthropogenic interventions are considered as the main threats to biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services provided by natural biomes. The land-use and conversion of these biomes for human survival causes environmental changes from the local scale to the landscape scale. These changes are responsible for the reduction and isolation of plant populations, the extinction and substitution of species in the remaining communities, and for changes in ecosystem functions, including carbon stock, which is important for mitigating climate change. However, anthropogenic impacts on biodiversity conservation of Cerrado and Atlantic Forest restoration, two Brazilian hotspots for biodiversity conservation in the world, remains poorly studied. Therefore, this thesis has five main objectives, distributed in five chapters: (i) to evaluate whether giant earthworm extraction in the Cerrado affects soil characteristics and plant species composition; (ii) to understand how chronic anthropogenic disturbances affect the diversity and functional composition of plants in the Cerrado; (iii) to verify if the Atlantic forest recovers its biodiversity and carbon stock in areas previously occupied for eucalyptus plantation; (iv) to evaluate the influence of several factors on the recovery of diversity and carbon of the Atlantic Forest; and (v) to understand how several factors act in the assembly of communities in forests of secondary growth of the Atlantic forest. For this, 12 fragments of Cerrado stricto sensu with different levels of disturbances and inserted in different landscapes and 42 areas in natural regeneration after the last eucalyptus cut in an Atlantic Forest region were sampled. In the first capture we found changes in soil chemical characteristics and plant species compositions because giant earthworm extraction, which causes revolving in the soil. In the second capture, we saw that the giant earthworm extraction and other chronic anthropogenic disturbances on a local or landscape scale decrease functional evenness and alter the functional composition of plants in the Cerrado. In the third capture we showed that the Atlantic Forest recovers biodiversity and carbon naturally after long-term eucalyptus plantation, that there are co-benefits between carbon conservation and biodiversity, and that shade-tolerant species and dispersed by animals are the most important in second-growth forest carbon stock. Inthe fourth capture we found that the management intensity and isolation decrease the second- growth biodiversity and carbon. Finally, in the fifth capture we showed that patch and landscape configuration are main responsible for the assembly of plant communities in areas in regeneration of the Atlantic Forest. Thus, we offer theoretical knowledge about anthropic impacts on the conservation of the Cerrado and in the restoration of the Atlantic Forest, which can serve as a basis for initiatives aimed at minimizing these impacts and increasing the efficiency in the conservation and restoration of these biomes. Keywords: Forest restoration. Biodiversity. Carbon stock. Land-use.