Efeitos da alteração da cobertura florestal e das mudanças climáticas sobre a distribuição de anuros florestais e endêmicos da Mata Atlântica

Abstract

Anthropic activities have generated several global changes that threaten biodiversity at a global scale. Studies indicate that climate change, particularly, may reduce the area of occurrence for many species. Moreover, habitat loss can substantially reduce biodiversity, since it is the main cause of species’ extinction on the globe. However, recent studies suggest that instead of loss there will be habitat increase in some forest biomes in the next decades – characterizing the forest transition process. Such increase may allow the occupation, by some species, in currently deforested areas, being able to even compensate or decrease climate change effects. The overall goal of this research was to quantify the combined effects of the increase of forest cover and the climate changes on endemic anurans of the Brazilian Atlantic rainforest, considered a biodiversity hotspot. To generate current and future (2050) distribution maps of the10selected anuran species, Species Distribution Modelling (SDM) was performed, using the algorithms BIOCLIM, GLM, MaxEnt, Random Forest e SVM. In order to analyze the effect of forest cover change, current (2000) and future (2050) forest cover maps were obtained by Global Biosphere Management Model(GLOBIOM), following two scenarios: Business-as- Usual (BAU), which assumes that forest cover of Atlantic rainforest will remain almost unchanged; and a more optimist scenario, Forest Code without small farms amnesty (FCnoSFA), which assumes the restoration of legal reserve areas of rural properties. Results indicate that climate change will have species-specific effects on anurans, with decreased climate suitability for three species, and increased climate suitability for seven species. For the three species that should undergo a reduction in climate suitability, the increase of forest cover, provided on FCnoSFA scenario, has the potential to compensate the negative effect of climate change, resulting in an increase of total environment suitability. These results reinforce the importance of reforestation and the land use policies to Atlantic Rainforest anuran biodiversity