Characterization of Life Forms in the Highest-Elevation Altiplano in South America: Influence of the Topography, Climate and Human Uses.

In the upper vegetation limit of the Andes, trees change to shrub forms or other life forms, such as low scrubs. The diversity of life forms decreases with elevation; tree life forms generally decrease, and communities of shrubs and herbs increase in the Andean highlands. Most of treeline populations in the northwestern Argentina Altiplano are monospecific stands of , a cold-tolerant evergreen species that is able to withstand harsh climatic conditions under different life forms.

Climate change-related growth improvements in a wide niche-breadth tree species across contrasting environments.

Background And Aims: The vulnerability and responsiveness of forests to drought are immensely variable across biomes. Intraspecific tree responses to drought in species with wide niche breadths that grow across contrasting climatically environments might provide key information regarding forest resistance and changes in species distribution under climate change. Using a species with an exceptionally wide niche breath, we tested the hypothesis that tree populations thriving in dry environments are more resistant to drought than those growing in moist locations.

Perspectives on socio-ecological studies in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

Socio-ecology studies the relationships between human activities and natural systems and their importance in management and public policy. Our objective was to analyse how published papers in countries with a high Human Development Index (HDI) perform socio-ecological studies and compare them between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. To do this, we used the Scopus platform as a source for searching and obtaining scientific papers about socio-ecological studies conducted in countries from the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

MASTREE+: Time-series of plant reproductive effort from six continents.

Significant gaps remain in understanding the response of plant reproduction to environmental change. This is partly because measuring reproduction in long-lived plants requires direct observation over many years and such datasets have rarely been made publicly available. Here we introduce MASTREE+, a data set that collates reproductive time-series data from across the globe and makes these data freely available to the community.

Multi-taxon biodiversity assessment of Southern Patagonia: Supporting conservation strategies at different landscapes.

In the last years, different spatial analyses were developed to support multi-taxon biodiversity conservation strategies. In fact, the use of species distribution models as input allowed to create spatial decision-support maps. Of special interest are maps of potential biodiversity (MPB), which define distribution and ecological requirements of relevant species and maps of priority conservation areas (MPCA), which define priority areas considering endemism and richness.

Forest phenoclusters for Argentina based on vegetation phenology and climate.

Forest biodiversity conservation and species distribution modeling greatly benefit from broad-scale forest maps depicting tree species or forest types rather than just presence and absence of forest, or coarse classifications. Ideally, such maps would stem from satellite image classification based on abundant field data for both model training and accuracy assessments, but such field data do not exist in many parts of the globe. However, different forest types and tree species differ in their vegetation phenology, offering an opportunity to map and characterize forests based on the seasonal dynamic of vegetation indices and auxiliary data.

Frontiers of protected areas versus forest exploitation: Assessing habitat network functionality in 16 case study regions globally.

Exploitation of natural forests forms expanding frontiers. Simultaneously, protected area frontiers aim at maintaining functional habitat networks. To assess net effects of these frontiers, we examined 16 case study areas on five continents.

Forest canopy-cover composition and landscape influence on bryophyte communities in Nothofagus forests of southern Patagonia.

Bryophytes (liverworts, mosses and hornworts) are one of the most diverse plant groups worldwide but one of the least studied in temperate forests from an ecological perspective. In comparison to vascular plants, bryophytes have a broader distribution and a longer altitudinal gradient, and their influence on the landscape is poorly understood. The objective was to evaluate environmental drivers that can influence bryophyte cover, richness, diversity, and nestedness in different forest canopy compositions in two typical landscapes across the natural distribution of bryophytes in Tierra del Fuego (Argentina).

Mapping the status of the North American beaver invasion in the Tierra del Fuego archipelago.

Quantifying the presence and environmental impact of invasive species is the starting point for research on management and nature conservation. North American beavers (Castor canadensis) were introduced to Argentina from Canada in 1946, and the species has been identified as a major agent of environmental change in the Tierra del Fuego archipelago in the Anthropocene. We studied the invasion status (distribution and density) of beavers through analyses of the dam densities in the Tierra del Fuego landscapes.

Changes in the leaf nutrient and pigment contents of G. Forst. in relation to irradiance and fertilization.

G. Forst. commonly named calafate, is a Patagonian shrub that grows in humid areas of the steppe, coastal thickets, edges and gaps of forests or along streams and rivers, with small purple berries.

Land sharing in South Patagonia: Conservation of above-ground beetle diversity in forests and non-forest ecosystems.

Land-sharing strategies, as variable retention silvicultural proposals, are useful to mitigate harmful effects of economic activities on forest biodiversity; benefits have been reported worldwide for several organisms. However, we suggest that this approach could be useful to improve beetle conservation not only in forests but also in other ecosystem types, based on the results from Southern Patagonia (Argentina). We studied above-ground beetle communities using pitfall traps in Nothofagus pumilio forests, Mulguraea tridens shrublands, and magellanic steppes.

Potential biodiversity map of understory plants for Nothofagus forests in Southern Patagonia: Analyses of landscape, ecological niche and conservation values.

The role of understory plants in native forests is critical for ecosystem function, wildlife protection and ecosystem productivity. The interest to estimate biodiversity increased during the last decades at landscape level. The objective was to elaborate a map of potential biodiversity (MPB) of understory species of Nothofagus forest using potential habitat suitability maps (PHS) of 15 plants in Santa Cruz province, Argentina.

Soil carbon is a useful surrogate for conservation planning in developing nations.

Defining the optimal placement of areas for biodiversity conservation in developing nations remains a significant challenge. Our best methods for spatially targeting potential locations for biodiversity conservation rely heavily on extensive georeferenced species observation data which is often incomplete or lacking in developing nations. One possible solution is the use of surrogates that enable site assessments of potential biodiversity values which use either indicator taxa or abiotic variables, or both.

Variable retention harvesting influences belowground plant-fungal interactions of seedlings in forests of southern Patagonia.

Background: The post-harvest recovery and sustained productivity of forests in Tierra del Fuego may be affected by the abundance and composition of ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF). Timber harvesting alters EMF community structure in many managed forests, but the impacts of harvesting can vary with the management strategy. The implementation of variable retention (VR) management can maintain, increase, or decrease the diversity of many species, but the effects of VR on EMF in the forests of southern Patagonia have not been studied, nor has the role of EMF in the regeneration process of these forests.

The database of the PREDICTS (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems) project.

The PREDICTS project-Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.

Effectiveness of fencing and hunting to control Lama guanicoe browsing damage: Implications for Nothofagus pumilio regeneration in harvested forests.

Browsing damage by native ungulates is often to be considered one of the reasons of regeneration failure in Nothofagus pumilio silvicultural systems. Fencing and hunting in forests at regeneration phase have been proposed to mitigate browsing effects. This study aims to determine effectiveness of these control methods in harvested forests, evaluating browsing damage over regeneration, as well as climate-related constraints (freezing or desiccation).