Caracterización de la lluvia y del banco de semillas germinable en pastizales sometidos a manejo con fines de restauración en un bosque seco tropical interandino

Abstract

Worldwide, the tropical dry forest is one of the most degraded ecosystems, mainly due to anthropic factors, affecting different aspects of the ecosystem at the level of composition, structure and functionality. The alteration of the ecosystem decreases its resilience capacity, mainly by affecting its regeneration potential, which is closely related to the germinable seed bank (BSG) and seed rain (LLS). One factor that affects the resilience of BST is the presence of invasive species, product of the conversion of these ecosystems to grasslands, so that evaluating the effect of these on seed rain and the germinable seed bank is essential to advance processes of most successful ecological restoration. In order to characterize these ecological processes (LLS and BSG) in a grassland cover subjected to different management regimes in an inter-Andean tropical dry forest, 42 seed traps were installed in 3 transects which were distributed within the forest and from the edge of the tree vegetation at different distances; Half of these traps were located in places where the grass removal was previously carried out, while the remaining half had no grass removal. Parallel to these seed traps, regeneration plots of 1m x 1m will be established for the characterization of the BSG in situ. The results of this work show that grasslands act as the main source of propagules and that the elimination of exotic grasses is not a forceful strategy against limiting their propagation and establishment; therefore, if there is no active intervention in the restoration processes to have a more diverse source of propagules, it will be difficult for a transition to the initial stages of succession to take place. Taking into account that in abandoned grasslands there is a very low probability of finding sources of propagules of important species for ecological restoration processes.