ABSTRACT
Seasonally dry tropical forests (SDTFs) occupy 27,367,815 ha in Brazil, representing 3.21% of the country’s territory (Sevilha et al. 2004). The delimitation of SDTFs used in this chapter follows that used by the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (IBGE 1992) and does not consider the entire caatinga biome as SDTFs, because most of the caatinga vegetation does not possess a forest structure. The Brazilian SDTFs have a naturally scattered distribution, occurring in several biomes but predominantly in the semiarid northeastern region (see Chapter 1, Figure 1.3). These ecosystems
CONTENTS
5.1 Introduction .................................................................................................. 69 5.2 Materials and Methods ............................................................................... 71
5.2.1 Sampling Design .............................................................................. 71 5.2.2 Forest Structure and Composition ................................................72 5.2.3 Soil and Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi Sampling .................... 73 5.2.4 Faunal Sampling .............................................................................. 73 5.2.5 Data Analyses ................................................................................... 74
5.3 Results and Discussion ............................................................................... 74 5.3.1 Soil Composition .............................................................................. 74 5.3.2 Biodiversity Patterns .......................................................................77 5.3.3 Successional Patterns .......................................................................77
