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Mangrove Vegetation of the Caeté Estuary

2010; Springer Nature; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-642-13457-9_6

2196-971X

Ulf Mehlig, Moirah Paula Machado de Menezes, Anneken Reise, Dirk Schories, Ernesto Medina,

Plant and Fungal Species Descriptions

The mangrove ecosystem is defined in many ways by its eponymous constituents, the mangrove trees. They are not only the most significant primary producers but also determine habitat quality through their physical structure and by interaction with the abiotic environment, e.g. by serving as substrate for a great number of organisms, by influencing soil chemistry with their root system or by governing the microclimate below their canopy. Development of the mangrove trees themselves depends on environmental settings like sediment deposition and erosion, inundation frequency, fresh water availability and temperature regime, among many others. According to these environmental settings, mangrove stands may exhibit great variation in structure and composition. A thorough description of different forest types along with selected environmental parameters is therefore crucial for any attempt to understand the ecology of the trees as well as of the associated mangrove organisms. However, without paying attention to the underlying processes and their temporal and spatial dynamics, knowledge will remain fragmentary, and may not be suitable for deriving, e.g., recommendations directed at sustainable management of mangrove resources. Unfortunately, direct observations of long-term changes in mangrove stand development can rarely be made; therefore, processes possibly decisive for stand development like the influence of neighborhood competition on establishment, growth and mortality of individual trees cannot be easily analyzed. However, computer simulations can help to test the plausibility of theoretical models of forest development by comparison of simulation results with real-world field data (see Chap 6 ). Within this chapter, we try to give an account of the floristic and structural variety of mangrove forest types developing under different environmental settings within the Caeté Estuary and document the annual temporal dynamics of mangrove productivity observable in phenology, litter and propagule production of a number of mangrove stands. We further present supra-annual stem growth patterns of the prevalent mangrove tree species. Finally, we relate the physico-chemical properties of soils and the stand-specific nutrient regime with the corresponding development of forest stands as well as with litter and root production.