Neotropical Forest Dynamics and the Global Climatic Changes

Abstract

Understanding how groups of different functional groups will respond to the Global Climatic Changes is of great relevance when one thinks about conservation, management and modeling of biomass production in regions with elevated biodiversity such as the Atlantic Forest and other tropical forest. In such ecosystems, trees can play a key role in the mitigation of the impacts caused by the increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2, by absorbing part of this gas through photosynthesis and transforming it into biomass. Using a succession approach, here we present a brief introduction about the succession process, some features of the functional groups (mainly that related to forest regeneration strategies), their relationship with an atmosphere enriched with CO2, the responses of plants to these new environmental conditions and some results obtained with Brazilian species. We suggest that the use forest regeneration is more advantageous due to the higher capacity to produce positive environmental benefits, such as the increase in biodiversity. Key –words: Atlantic rain forest, CO2, ecological succession, ecophysiology