South Atlantic Tourist Resorts: Predictors for Changes Induced by Afforestation
In Argentina, coastal resorts are located in dunes, whichwere originally covered by native herbaceous vegetation.Until the area became important for tourism, the primary activities in the coastal lands were fishing and cattle-farming. Up to then, it was mandatory to afforest the dunes before land wa...
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2010
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| Acceso en línea: | https://bibliotecadigital.exactas.uba.ar/collection/paper/document/paper_97814443_v_n_p363_Faggi http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12110/paper_97814443_v_n_p363_Faggi |
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| Sumario: | In Argentina, coastal resorts are located in dunes, whichwere originally covered by native herbaceous vegetation.Until the area became important for tourism, the primary activities in the coastal lands were fishing and cattle-farming. Up to then, it was mandatory to afforest the dunes before land was assembled and sold for urban or residential development. Since then, afforestation with exotic trees has been used to stabilize the mobile dunes. Weinvestigated the effect of exotic afforestation on dune vegetation and bird diversity.Weconducted pair-wise plant and bird inventories in both afforested and undisturbed dunes in the province of Buenos Aires.Werecorded plant and bird richness as well as plant cover, and also computed similarity index values for both plant and bird assemblages. As the structure of the vegetation in dunes changed from an open to a relatively closed canopy, the quality of the natural vegetation deteriorated so that the most vulnerable species disappeared. Afforested sites showed a clear decline in the shade-intolerant species that are characteristic of dunes, and of native species, indicating moist environmental conditions as well. Grassy dunes were significantly richer in bird species than wooded dunes. Grassland and rural birds, predominantly insectivores, were mostly abundant in them. In the forest, the bird community was dominated by granivores and species characteristic of urban areas. The afforested sites contained fewer plant species of wet or damp conditions, indicating that they are drier than the open grasslands. The functional plant groups 'dune obligate' and 'moist soils' and the bird groups 'insectivore' and 'granivore' were found to be good predictors of habitat changes resulting from afforestation, so much so that they can be used as bioindicators. © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. |
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