André Eduardo Biscaia de Lacerda

Sustainable Forest Management in Rural Southern Brazil: Exploring Participatory Forest Management Planning

Historically, agriculture and livestock farming have been the main drivers of land cover conversion replacing natural forests in tropical and sub-tropical Brazil. The consequences for the landscape are well known: habitat fragmentation, biodiversity loss, and reductions in the quality of environmental services. The intense exploitation of natural forest resources tends to generate immediate, but limited, short-term economic wealth, which is generally very poorly distributed. In the long-term, forest resources are depleted thus reducing the ability of small rural owners to move out of impoverished situations. Therefore, while conversion of forest to agriculture can in some cases improve rural incomes, all too often deforestation leads to impoverishment of both ecosystems and communities. In Brazil, forest displacement in favour of agriculture and livestock has occurred since early in its colonization; in the Southern region – the principal agricultural area – this process took place in the late XIX and XX centuries. In this part of the country, past forestry practices such as clear-cutting and predatory harvesting, combined with social and legal encouragement, produced scenarios in which forested lands are now mostly degraded, not fulfilling their ecologic, social or economic roles in our society. In spite of the challenges that forest management faces in sub-tropical Brazil, some promising experiences and experiments are helping to create an environment receptive to the reintroduction of sustainable forest management (SFM) as a means to enhance economic incomes for rural property. Herein, we explore the obstacles related to the adoption of SFM as an economic alternative and propose technical opportunities for both small and large rural properties by presenting two case studies.

Investigating the Mendelian inheritance, genetic linkage, and genotypic disequilibrium for ten microsatellite loci of Araucaria angustifolia

Abstract Araucaria angustifolia is a dioecious and wind pollinated conifer that typically occurs in higher attitudes of Southern Brazil. After a significant reduction of its population during the twentieth century, public policies have enabled natural populations to recover. As new studies focus on the genetics of the species it is important to investigate Mendelian inheritance, genetic linkage, and genotypic disequilibrium for the microsatellite loci developed for the species. Here we analyze ten microsatellite loci developed for A. angustifolia by genotyping 295 adult trees and 13 open pollinated progenies from a forest fragment in Santa Catarina, Brazil. The likelihood G-test shows a perfect 1:1 Mendelian segregation for all ten loci, indicating that these molecular markers are genetic markers. Significant genetic linkage between pairwise loci was detected in only 3% of the tests, suggesting that these loci are not located in the same linkage groups within the chromosomes. However, genotypic disequilibrium was detected in 51% of pairwise loci for adult trees, probably due to the strong spatial genetic structure of the population. Our results indicate that the ten loci analyzed can be used in studies on genetic diversity and structure, mating system, and gene flow of the species.

Genetic diversity and divergence applied to Enviromental services for Araucaria angustifolia(Brazil)

Humans derive many utilitarian benefits from the environmental services of biotas and ecosystems.Yet ecosystem, species and genetic levels is increasingly lost from agricultural landscapes mainly due to maximisation of production [1,2]. The genetic variability is a result of several forces including mutation, recombination and gene flow. Allele frequencies are altered by natural selection and by genetic drift. Whilst mutation, recombination and genetic drift are random and independent processes, natural selection is a directional process towards evolutionary change [3]. The Araucaria Rainforest is one of the most important biomes occurring naturally in southern Brazil. The extensive logging and agricultural expansion became this forest extremely fragmented. Particularly important is the factor of ecosystem resilience, which appears to underpin many of the services. While biodiversity often plays a key role, the services can also derive from biomass and other attributes of biotas, for example, genetic diversity of a particular species. Landscape genetics are being used in this project to improve the understanding of fragmentation impact to assist an environmental services scheme. The objective of this study was to assess by microsatellites markers, the genetic diversity and dynamics in remnant patches of Araucaria angustifolia rainforest, with different levels of human modification. The project compared two different forest conditions: one is 1.157,48 ha of continuous forest, and the other is a fragmented forest remnant, with size from 8 ha, appraised 5 km from the continuous forest area. Genetic diversity and divergence of seedlings and adult individuals present in forest fragment was compared with the genetic composition of samples appraised in continuous forest. Cambium and seed material were collected from each recorded tree, and genomic DNA was extracted using the method described in Mazza & Bittencourt (2000). The seeds for DNA extraction had undergone a slight adjustment – Proteinase K was added to megagametophyte (maternal origin) and embryo extraction. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) conditions used were establish by Qiagen Multiplex Master Mix protocol (1022830) and use fluorescents dye labelling. Two multiplexed systems of microsatellites were applied with the 8 primers. The eight loci used were CRCAc2, Ag23, Ag62, Ag45, CRCAc1, Ag20, Ag56 and As90. Following PCR this dilution was running in ABI sequencer 3100. Gene Scan and Genotyper software were used for data collection and alleles analysis. The average number of alleles per locus among adult trees in the continuous forest was 8.10, compared to 5.15 appraised in forest fragment. The means of expected heterozygosity were 0.623 for continuous forest and 0.579 for forest fragment, while observed heterozygosity range was respectively, 0.571 and 0.723. Subpopulations of forest fragments were more distinguished than subpopulations of continuous, due the average fixation index was 0.082 for subpopulations in the continuous forest and 0.210 in fragment. It is worth noting that the levels of genetic differentiation among all subpopulations can be considered to be high. Paternity analysis, within the continuous forest indicated that 48% of offspring were fertilized by pollen from trees outside the plot site. The average pollination distance within the continuous was 95 m. In the trees from forest fragment, the analysis showed that 42% to 65% of the offspring was fertilized by pollen from trees outside fragment. The effective number of pollen donors in the continuous forest ranged among seed-trees from 2 to 10, and in the fragment from 2 to 6. The results suggest high pollen dispersal distance in both conditions and an absence of reproductive isolation. They also show high pollen immigration and dispersal distance among the tree groups. The results suggest that fragmentation increases divergence in Araucaria angustifolia.The population in continuous forest showed higher genetic diversity in the adult population than the population of trees in fragment. The reducing the heterozygosity were low, may be due the recent forest fragmentation history. There are more inbreeding in fragmented population than in continuous population. Fragmentation increased the genetic divergence among the fragmented population. However, the genetic results indicated the presence of long-distance dispersal leading to functional connectivity between isolated forest fragment. The survival of remnants of Araucaria angustifolia patches as well as single trees in the agricultural landscape is key factors for species conservation and could be applied to environmental payment services, these strategy for A. angustifolia is an integration of conservation strategies across reserves and the surrounding matrix, including productive agricultural areas, to assist gene flow movement between temporally suitable habitats.