INVESTIGADORES
MARTINEZ PASTUR Guillermo Jose
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Ecological impact of variable retention management in Nothofagus pumilio forests through the use of meta-analysis.
Autor/es:
G MARTÍNEZ PASTUR; R SOLER ESTEBAN; MV LENCINAS; S SCHINDLER; PL PERI
Lugar:
Concepción
Reunión:
Conferencia; IUFRO Landscape Ecology Conference; 2012
Institución organizadora:
IUFRO
Resumen:
Forests are used for multiple purposes, generating conflicts between harvesting and biodiversity conservation. Variable Retention-VR is a management proposal imitating natural processes that can reduce these conflicts. In South Patagonia a portion of the original stands are maintained unlogged (30% as aggregated-AR and 15% as dispersed-DR retention) to preserve structural and compositional diversity. Meta-analysis combines several studies to synthetize individual findings. In this study, we assess the ecological impact of VR management in Nothofagus pumilio forests using a data set encompassing a large quantity of published and unpublished research results from long-term plots and performing a meta-analysis. We included 710 variables (113 types along the first 9 years-after-harvesting) measuring different aspects of (i) the abiotic environment (e.g. climate, soil), (ii) biodiversity (e.g. species richness and abundances), (iii) forest structure (e.g. volume), and (iv) forest reproduction (e.g. flowers). We compared the values for primary forests-PF, AR and DR with ANOVAs. We calculated effect sizes by Fisher´s Z-transformation using F values in random-effect models with categorical data using Metawin 2.1 software. The results showed that DR and AR caused a decline in the values of forest structure and reproduction variables, and an increase in the values of the abiotic and biotic variables when compared to PF. As a general pattern, greater changes were observed in DR, while AR showed lower impacts and values more similar to PF. We conclude that variable retention management has significant ecological impact, but that at least in the aggregates, primary conditions can partly be maintained.