Publicações
COMPOSITION OF A SECONDARY FOREST SEED BANK CONSIDERING ITS POTENTIAL USE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL RECLAMATION
BRAGA, Antonio Jorge Tourinho; GRIFFITH, James Jackson; PAIVA, Haroldo Nogueira de and MEIRA NETO, João Augusto Alves. Composição do banco de sementes de uma floresta semidecidual secundária considerando o seu potencial de uso para recuperação ambiental. Rev. Árvore [online]. 2008, vol.32, n.6, pp. 1089-1098 .
Autores
Joao Augusto Alves Meira Neto
Considering its potential use in degraded environments, this study characterized the composition
of a seed bank obtained from an area of typical secondary succession on the Federal University of Viçosa
campus. Inferences were made whether this indicator reflects future sustainability, given the seed bank’s potential
for revegetating degraded sites. Its floristic composition was compared with indices obtained in other similar
seed bank studies. The specific site is located at the Mata da Garagem woods, a 40-year old forest fragment
covering a low ridge parallel to a campus roadway. Twenty seed bank samples were collected from randomly
selected points, each sample consisting of four subsamples. The experiment was installed on the campus nursery
using 20 wooden boxes (50x50x15cm). After 90 days, 508 individual plants were counted, and 38 species
were identified, as belonging to 34 genera distributed among 22 families. The diversity index (H’) is 2.11;
whereas the equability (J) value of 0.67 is considered high compared to other seed bank studies. Cecropia
hololeuca (28.9%) and Solanum erianthum (18,7%) are indicated as the most important species within the
forest regeneration process. Results suggest that the seed bank studied indeed has the potential for promoting
and guaranteeing an ecological succession process dynamics on degraded lands of similar ecosystems.