Post-logging dynamics of a terra firme rain forest in the Brazilian Amazon

Tropical rain forests are a source of many goods and services and they present the highest biological diversity among terrestrial ecosystems. However, many processes such as unregulated exploitation, land change use and climate change threaten these ecosystems. In this context, sustainable forest management (SFM) presents an option to enable forest conservation while maintaining goods and services provided by these forests. Managing forests inevitably means manipulating their structures and as a consequence shifts in structure and composition are unavoidable. The intensity of these shifts will depend on the disturbance regime and the ecosystem’s resistance and resilience in relation to disturbance. Thus, sustainable management of tropical forests requires an understanding of their responses to disturbance through harvesting. The resilience of these forests to harvesting disturbance is likely influenced by the density and species or functional diversity of residual trees. This project aims to analyse the effects of four harvesting severities and of residual diversity on the recovery dynamics of tree communities in a terra firme rainforest in the Brazilian Amazon over a period of 30 years. The study area (180ha) is located in the Tapajós National Forest, municipality of Belterra, Pará, Brazil. The outcomes may help towards the scientific understanding of dynamics and ecology of the tropical rain forests and support the improvement of the techniques used in forest management of this region.