Monitoring variable retention harvesting in southern Patagonia Nothofagus forests using ground beetles as potential indicators.

LENCINAS, MV; SOLA, FJ; CELLINI, JM; MARTÍNEZ PASTUR, G

Conferencia; IUFRO-LE Conference.; 2015

Variable retention has been proposed to mitigate harmfuleffects of harvesting in southern Patagonian Nothofagus pumilio forests. Wepropose the use of ground beetle diversity as impact indicators due to their abundanceand diversity. The objective was to determine the impact of two differentretention methods on N. pumilio forests using ground beetles as biodiversityindicators. We sampled three areas under management across Tierra del Fuego (Argentina), including old growth(OG) and harvested stands, with aggregated (AR) and dispersed (DR) retention.We located 4 sets of pitfall traps (each set consisting of 5 traps) in eacharea, which were collected after a week during middle summer. We sampled 1437individuals from 45 morpho-species of 16 families. Significant differences werefound in abundance between areas and treatments, whereas species richness onlychanged between areas. The abundance was highest in OG, followed by AR and DR.Harvesting reduces the abundance of ground beetles (either AR or DR) butrichness is more dependent on site location. Changes across landscapes makeoff-reserve conservation strategies necessary.