O manejo do fogo nos biomas cerrado e pantanal : uma abordagem cienciométrica e experimental

Abstract

Fire plays a crucial role in global biodiversity and, despite relatively recent, fire management is of extreme importance for the Brazilian Cerrado. Both high-intensity anthropogenic fires and the complete fire suppression can reduce the biodiversity of this biome. The different fire histories can cause habitat heterogeneity and as a consequence increase biodiversity. Although the large number of studies on fire in the Cerrado, we have not found any study addressing trends and gaps in these studies. However, understanding the current stage of scientific publications with fire in this biome can be fundamental for scientific advances in this area. Therefore, our first object was to identify the trends and gaps of publications about fires in the Cerrado, which helped in aiming the next objectives. Among the gaps identified are: i) studies on different spatial scales, mainly at large scales; ii) studies showing the impacts of burned areas with different fire histories; iii) studies addressing the effects of the interaction between fire and other disturbances. Consequently, our second objective was to evaluate how different types of fires can influence the ant colonization of experimental nests in the Cerrado and the bioindication potential of ant species in the different fire treatments. We found that different types of fires impact colonization in different ways. In other words, the type of fire should also be considered when managing preservation areas. Besides, we observed that three different ant species acted as indicators of different fire intensities. Finally, our third objective was to evaluate the effect of the interaction between fire and other disturbances (flood) at different spatial scales. For this, we sampled soil ants in a floodplain area with different fire histories and elevations (a proxy for flood time). We found that fires have a dominant effect over flooding, that is, only fires impacted the ant species richness and composition. Nonetheless, although the fire causes major impacts on ant species, these effects tend to disappear over time. Furthermore, we found no impact of the flood period on the ant species, which show flood resistance and fire resilience by the ants.