Effects of Forest Plantations on Mammals in the Atlantic Forest of Misiones, Argentina

IEZZI, M. E.; CRUZ, M. P.; VARELA, D.; DE ANGELO, C. D.; DI BITETTI, M. S.

Monterey, California

Conferencia; Society for Conservation GIS Annual Conference; 2015

Society for Conservation GIS

Mammals are sensitive to environmental transformations and the productive landscapes can affect them. We evaluated the effects of different components of the forest-plantation landscape on the mammal community in Misiones, Argentina. Using GIS, we deployed 120 camera trap stations active for 53 days in average, randomly located in a grid of 2x2km, distributed in three treatments: 44 in continuous forest, 43 in fragments of native forest within the plantation landscape and 33 in pine plantations. We compared the richness and diversity of mammal community between treatments and we used a principal components analysis (PCA) to sort the stations according to their species composition. At each station we measured: structural complexity of vegetation, distance to a continuous native forest block, percentage of native forest in a ratio of 2 km, and ?cost of access? (which indirectly measures the poaching pressure). The last 3 variables were generated with GIS tools. We used GLM to study the effect of these variables in the assembly of mammals. The richness and diversity were the highest in the continuous forest and the lowest in forest plantations. The variables that affected the composition of the assembly were the cost of access (poaching pressure), the structure of the vegetation and the distance to the continuous native forest block. These results allow us to make recommendations to improve the management of forest plantations and to reduce their impacts on mammal community.