Recruitment of dry forest tree species in Central Brazil pastures

Abstract

Despite its importance as a wealthy source of unique biodiversity (Janzen 1988) and that it covers 42% of the tropical vegetation worldwide (Murphy and Lugo 1995), the dry forest is the most endangered terrestrial ecosystem and one of the least protected (Scariot and Sevilha 2005). In CentralAmerica for example, less than 1% of the original 500,000 km2 is preserved in conservation units (Janzen 1988, Sanchez-Azofeifa et al. 2003). In Brazil, the seasonal deciduous forests-a type of dry forest-covers 27,367,815 ha (3.21%) of the territory, from which 1,072,946 ha (3.9%) are protected by conservation units. Among conserved areas of deciduous dry forest, only 117,980 ha (0.43%) are in conservation units of restricted use as national parks and biological reserves. Most of the conservation units (402,456 ha or 1.47%) allow limited economic use of the land and natural resources. There is no information of the conservation unit assigned in official database for 552,509 ha (2.02%) of dry forests (Sevilha et al. 2004).