The Canterbury Plains have lost most of their pre-Polynesian indigenous vegetation, primarily forest and shrubland. One of the few remaining areas is the 2.3 ha Eyrewell Scientific Reserve which consists mostly of low känuka (Kunzea ericoides) forest and a small area of grassland. We assessed the Reserve vegetation using a combination of plots and transect surveys at different times of the year...

Tropical forests continue to be deforested because forest owners believe they can earn more income through land uses involving forest conversion. A case study in a Mexican rainforest revealed that enrichment planting with the native tree species Pouteria sapota (‘mamey’) is a management approach that can increase the commercial value of the forest enough to compete with these destructive land u...

Tropical montane ecosystems of the Andes are critically threatened by a rapid land-use change which can potentially affect stream variables, aquatic communities, and ecosystem processes such as leaf litter breakdown. However, these effects have not been sufficiently investigated in the Andean region and at high altitude locations in general. Here, we studied the influence of land use (forest-pa...

The objective of this paper is to assess the changes in soil physical and chemical properties resulting from conversion native forest pasture secondary state Santa Catarina, Brazil. Seven forest–pasture successional stages were identified using aerial photographs satellite images acquired 1957, 1978, 2008. Successional coded as FFF, FPF, PFF, PPF, FPP, FFP, PPP, where first, second, third lette...

Background: Forest conversion to agriculture and pasture that has occurred in the last decades southern Mexico can affect ecological functioning of rivers streams. Objective: investigate how land use change at different scales (catchment riparian zone) influences water quality benthic chlorophyll streams Chiapas Tabasco mountains. Methods: Over a period 13 months, physicochemical variables were...

Conservation and restoration projects involving abandoned cattle pastures pose several challenges. Restoration ecologists recognize that natural restoration is possible, but few species can successfully colonize degraded pastures. The aim of the present study was to evaluate whether land colonized by the tree Myracrodruon urundeuva increase the amount of habitat available for bird communities i...

Communities of P-solubilizing bacteria, fungi and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, were evaluated in two different ecosystems. Samplings taken from two areas of Atlantic forest, in Paraty-RJ, Brazil, one with a secondary forest and the other with a grass pasture were studied. Four growth media: GL (glucose and yeast extract), GES (glucose, soil extract, KNO3, CaCl2, MgSO4, NaCl, FeEDTA and micronu...