How do commercial plantations developing in agricultural landscape matrices affect bird community composition of the natural grassland and subtropical forest?

ANAHÍ SOFÍA VACCARO; MARÍA ISABEL BELLOCQ

Posadas

Congreso; IUFRO CONFERENCE POSADAS 2018 Adaptive Management for Forested Lanscapes in Transformation; 2018

IUFRO - INTA

To assess the impact of forestry on biodiversity, it is relevant to consider the natural landscape matrix where commercial plantations develop. In landscapes where native forest is the natural matrix, as opposed to open habitats, commercial plantations are low-contrast patches and then less detrimental to native birds than other anthropogenic habitat types. In South America, althoughthe original landscape matrix of the Pampean Grasslands (PG) and the Atlantic Forest (AF) were different, currently are both highly degraded due to agriculture. The objective was to analyze the similarity of bird community composition between tree plantations (TP) and protected areas (PA) of the PG (in Argentina) and the AF (in Paraguay). Despite the agricultural landscape matrix, we expected the similarity to be higher in the AF than in the PG, because TP are more similar environmentally to subtropical forests than to grasslands. Birds were surveyed in 6 TP and 3 PA sites in the PG, and 5 TP and 3 PA sites in the AF. At each site, we surveyed 10 observation points with a fixed 50-m radius during the breeding season. Contrary to our expectations, similarity of bird communities between TP and PA was higher in the PG than in the AF, but with nonsignificant differences (F1,9=2.063, p=0.185). The relatively low similarity between TP and PA in the AF may be partially explained for bird species present in TP but absent in PA. Some of those species are likely present in the agricultural landscape matrix. TP and PA in the PG shared more species than we expected. To preserve native bird species in the AF, we recommend to promote corridors between TP and the natural forest. In both biomes, the number and quality of PA should increase.