Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:30:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2013-08-22Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:20:46Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 000758738.pdf: 7532623 bytes, checksum: 049da634d81243496c0cdee446935932 (MD5) / A pesquisa foi realizada na microbacia hidrográfica experimental B, com área de 36,68 ha, pertencente ao Laboratório de Hidrologia Florestal Eng. Agr. Walter Emmerich, localizado no Parque Estadual da Serra do Mar – Núcleo Cunha/SP. Para caracterizar a fitofisionomia da vegetação e sua evolução foi elaborado o mapeamento para os anos de 1962, 1977, 1997 e 2009, com base na interpretação de fotografias aéreas e ortofoto digital colorida e, posteriormente, espacializados em base cartográfica digital utilizando-se o Sistema de Informações Geográficas (SIG) ArcGis 9.3. Avaliou-se em termos quantitativos a entrada e saída de água, via precipitação e deflúvio ao longo dos anos hídricos de 1987 a 2008, e assim foi possível estimar a evapotranspiração real anual pelo método do balanço hídrico. xv O mapeamento da vegetação da microbacia indicou treze fitofisionomias, sendo que foi possível observar principalmente a evolução de sete delas: D1 – porte arbóreo alto, com estrutura de dossel uniforme; D2 – porte arbóreo alto, com estrutura de dossel desuniforme; D4 – porte arbóreo baixo a médio, com estrutura de dossel uniforme; D8 – porte arbóreo médio, com estrutura de dossel uniforme, P – pasto; Vs1 – porte arbóreo alto, com estrutura de dossel desuniforme (capoeirão) e Vs4 – clareira. O balanço hídrico médio para os vinte e dois anos da série apresentou precipitação, deflúvio e evapotranspiração real de 1.856,3 mm (100%), 1.354,38 mm (72,96%) e 501,92 mm (27,04%), respectivamente. Para cada processo hidrológico verificou-se uma grande oscilação dos dados anuais. A precipitação e o deflúvio mostraram uma tendência negativa, sendo mais acentuada para o último processo. Já para a evapotranspiração real a tendência foi positiva. As variáveis precipitação e deflúvio anuais apresentaram alto valor do coeficiente de determinação... / The survey was carried out in the experimental catchment B, with an area of 36.68 ha, belonging to the Eng. Agr. Walter Emmerich Forest Hydrology Laboratory, located in Serra do Mar State Park - Core Cunha / SP. To characterize the physiognomy of the vegetation and its evolution was developed mapping for the years 1962, 1977, 1997 and 2009, based on an interpretation of aerial photographs and digital color orthophoto, after spatialized in digital cartographic base by using the Geographical Information System (GIS) ArcGIS 9.3. To in quantitative terms evaluate the input and output of water via precipitation and runoff of the water years 1987 to 2008, and thus estimate the annual actual evapotranspiration by water balance method. The vegetation mapping of the xvii watershed indicated thirteen vegetation types, and it was possible to observe the evolution of mainly seven: D1 – arboreal high, structure with uniform canopy; D2 – arboreal high, with uneven canopy structure; D4 – low to medium-sized arboreal, structure with uniform canopy; D8 – arboreal average, structure with uniform canopy; P – pasture; Vs1 – sized arboreal high, with uneven canopy structure (brushwood) and Vs4 – glade. The medium water balance for the twenty-two years of the series presented precipitation, runoff and evapotranspiration of 1,856.3 mm (100%), 1,354.38 mm (72.96%) and 501.92 mm (27.04%), respectively. For each hydrological process there was a large variation in annual data. Rainfall and runoff showed a negative trend, being more pronounced in the last case. As for the real evapotranspiration trend was positive. The variables annual precipitation and runoff presented a high coefficient of determination (r² = 0.8356), indicating a good linear relationship. Thus, the results showed that natural regeneration of vegetation is affecting water production, therefore, with increasing real evapotranspiration ...

This study examines how deforestation in Malaysia is framed as an economic issue fought out in the political arena using cultural codes as an entry point to examining the political tensions of contemporary Malaysia. Three themes recur throughout this work. The first theme concerns the centrality of resources in Malaysia's colonial and post-colonial political economy. The second theme concerns the displacement of the anxieties of national and cultural survival onto the contests over economic rights. And the third theme is the way collective memories 'flesh out' contemporary contests between the state and civil society. In the sense that the three themes are inter-related, this study traces the twinned construction, and opposition, of the two central ideas: of 'nature' in the form of the rainforest and 'race' in the guise of nation. In keeping with the role of memory in present-day social and political engagements, this study weaves both archival and contemporary material to trace the construction of the history, imagery and vocabulary that have been mapped onto the physical space of the rainforest. I explore the production of the cultural codes through this mapping process that are then used to articulate the contests over the rainforest. These codes are the consequence of negotiations that reflect the unstable alliances and inconsistent identities of contemporary Malaysia, and they are the legacies, albeit translated, of colonialism. In retracing the contests over and about the forests, I hope to shed some light on why Malaysians made, and continue to make, decisions that appear to work against them. The decisions affecting the fate of the rainforest reflects choices made about the kind of society Malaysians live with. Hence, the three core chapters of this study examine military, political/cultural and economic contests and negotiations surrounding the birth of the Malayan/Malaysian nation-state through their impacts on the rainforest. By acknowledging how much of Malaysia's contemporary politics is its colonial legacy, I hope to highlight the trade-off we have made between limited political engagement and development. To accept that we cannot protect basic rights as the price of economic success is to continue to live within the racist framework of colonialism that human rights are only for some humans. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate

In this dissertation, I examine how massive technocratic investments deployed over the last twenty years are changing the ways in which Peru’s tropical rainforests come to be experienced, known and governed in the context of climate change and biodiversity loss. I focus on the region of Loreto, Peru’s largest Amazonian region, in order to explore recent changes in two realms of tropical rainforest governance: the traceability of tropical timber and the georeferentiation of Indigenous lands. Drawing on 24 months of ethnographic and archival fieldwork following the activities of state bureaucrats, loggers, Indigenous peoples, land surveyors and other human and more-than-human actors, I show how such interventions have focused on stabilizing elusive calculative abstractions that I call metaphysical objects: objects such as lines, points or volumes that cannot be directly experienced through the senses, but whose continuous stabilization through everyday technocratic labor carries the promise of making rainforest information ever more coordinated, standardized and self-consistent. As emerging regimes of global environmental governance increasingly demand modes of epistemic coordination and standardization at planetary scales, I argue that metaphysical objects are becoming themselves important terrains of political struggle where what comes to be at stake are the terms of their always precarious stabilization. In this context, I contend that following the speculative processes by which metaphysical objects are precariously stabilized across tropical rainforest, Indigenous communities and state offices is crucial to understand the political and epistemic dilemmas that surround emerging regimes of global environmental governance in the age of climate change and biodiversity loss.

In this thesis I describe fine-scale spatial patterns in rain forest termites, from the colony to the assemblage level, sampled from one hectare plots in Central African and South East Asian lowland rain forest. By so doing the ecological interactions that structure this functionally important and abundant soil community were identified. The African termite assemblage, dominated by soil-feeding termites, saturated the upper soil profile (collected from 90% of soil pits). In contrast termites were collected from <50% of soil pits in Asia, with this difference reflecting the lower species densities and abundances of soil-feeding termites in Asian forests. Territoriality and inter-specific competition was shown to be important between colonies of soil-feeding species in the African plot. The termite assemblages were spatially associated with several environmental properties. However these could not explain the spatial patterns in the functional components of the assemblages. Wood-feeding termites were highly patchily distributed, due to the heterogeneous nature of their food material, but also due to possible competitive interactions for this. Humus-feeding termites were homogenously structured, due to the continuous nature of soil as their feeding and nesting material. True soil-feeding termites, unique to the African assemblage, were heterogeneously distributed despite the equally continuous nature of their feeding and nesting material. This structure may arise from facilitative interactions, such as co-operative defence against ant predation which may be intense in African systems, or through the transfer of soil material at different stages of decomposition. Competition for space is apparent in both regions, both at the colony level among soil-feeding genera, and between aggregations of functional groups. Positive and negative biotic interactions, operating at various spatial and functional scales, appear to be important in influencing how assemblage composition is spatially structured. If indeed facilitation is important in maintaining the taxonomic and functional diversity in termite assemblages, it would be valuable to confirm the mechanism(s) that drives this (i.e. predation and/or food transfer), as these may then influence ecosystem stability.

Tropical rainforests have an unparalleled capacity to sequester carbon, harbor biodiversity, and cycle water and nutrients due to their high rates of primary production. The large biomass stocks and rapid regeneration rates of these forests are often attributed to ample soil nitrogen and quick recovery of the nitrogen cycle in tropical soils following disturbance. Symbiotic nitrogen-fixing trees, which are relatively abundant at tropical latitudes, have the greatest capacity to provide tropical rainforests with new nitrogen, yet the ecological drivers of tropical symbiotic nitrogen fixers and their effects on the forests they inhabit are not well understood. This dissertation consists of four chapters that examine the patterns, environmental controls, and ecological consequences of symbiotic nitrogen-fixing trees in regenerating and intact rainforests in the Caribbean lowlands of Costa Rica. In chapter 1, I use field sampling in a chronosequence of rainforest plots to show that symbiotic nitrogen fixation declines through succession despite increases in the basal area of nitrogen-fixing trees. Chapters 2 and 3 describe results from a controlled shadehouse experiment assessing the effects of light, soil nitrogen, and plant competition on nitrogen fixation rates and the growth and biomass allocation of nitrogen fixers and non-fixers. In chapter 2, I demonstrate that light regulates nitrogen fixation more strongly than soil nitrogen availability. This is a departure from the historical focus on soil nitrogen as the primary regulator of nitrogen fixation and has the potential to resolve longstanding paradoxes of tropical nitrogen cycling. In chapter 3, I show that nitrogen fixation provides some resistance to competitive effects from neighboring plants in nitrogen-limited conditions, and that nitrogen fixers in these conditions downregulate their fixation rates in the presence of a competitor. This chapter also demonstrates that nitrogen fixation does not represent a significant structural cost to the plant, as reduced root biomass of nitrogen fixers more than compensates for allocation to nodule production. Finally, in Chapter 4, I demonstrate that nitrogen-fixing trees in our chronosequence plots do not promote forest growth, as expected given their capacity to fertilize their neighbors, but rather inhibit forest growth because they are strong competitors. These chapters describe several unexpected findings – i.e. that light primarily drives nitrogen fixation and that nitrogen fixers slow forest growth – which provide new and important insight into the role that nitrogen-fixing trees play in the growth of Costa Rican rainforests.

Abstract not available

A forest type dominated by Peltogyne gracilipes Ducke (Caesalpiniaceae) occurs on Maraca Island on a range of soil types. Maraca is located in Roraima State (Brazil) in the Rio Uraricoera and has an area of about 100,000 ha. This study compares the structure and floristic composition of the Peltogyne forest with the most widespread lowland forest type on Maraca and investigates some factors that could be involved in the persistent monodominance of Peltogyne. Three 0.25 ha plots were set up in each of three forest types: Peltogyne-rich forest (PRF), Peltogyne-poor forest (PPF) and forest without Peltogyne (FWP). Within each plot all trees (~ 10 cm dbh) were recorded. Seedlings and saplings were sampled in sub-plots of 2 m x 1 m (seedlings) and 4 m x 4 m (saplings). In the PPF and FWP, Sapotaceae were the most important family with the highest dominance and relative density values. Caesalpiniaceae showed high values in the PRF and PPF. Licania kunthiana, Pradosia surinamensis and Simarouba amara occurred in the forest types. Peltogyne dominated had 20% of stems and 53% of the trees ~ 10 cm dbh, and 91% of the canopy layer the canopy in total basal stems and 97% in all the the PRF and area of all of the total basal area of individuals > 50 cm dbh. In PPF, Lecythis corrugata and Tetragastris panamensis were the most abundant species, followed by Peltogyne. In the FWP the most abundant trees (~ 10 cm dbh) were L. kunthiana and P. surinamensis. In general, Peltogyne had low rates of seed predation and herbivory, but suffered locally high levels of damage to its seeds by leaf-cutter ants and was once observed to have an infestation of larvae of the moth Eulepidotis phrygionia on its young leaves. Peltogyne had no allelopathic effects on tested species and had VA mycorrhizal associations. Its occurrence remains unexplained but is most clearly correlated with soil magnesium.

No description available.

The paradox of tropical forests is that they are simultaneously the most diverse, the least understood, and the most imperiled terrestrial ecosystem in the world. Dramatic increases in the atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO$ sb2$) concentration threaten to adversely affect fundamental climatic and ecosystem processes, gradually changing many things which we do not yet understand. Although the impacts of this rise have been studied in temperate areas, little research has investigated tree responses in the tropics, especially under natural frost conditions. This thesis examines three central issues in tropical ecophysiology and global change. First, it investigates the feasibility of in-situ measurements of several physiological traits under heterogeneous environmental conditions in a Panamanian rainforest. Second, it studies whether physiological traits differ among species and which traits are most consistent with ecological niche. Finally, it explores how variable species are in response to elevated CO$ sb2$. If ecologically-defined functional groups were to remain physiologically similar under increased CO$ sb2$, they could be used in accurately representing the variation at the species level in a global change model of system-level responses. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Lic.-avh. (sammanfattning) Umeå : Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet, 2007. / Härtill 2 uppsatser.