Artigo

Demographic Threats to the Sustainability of Brazil Nut Exploitation

A comparative analysis of 23 populations of the Brazil nut tree (Bertholletia excelsa) across the Brazilian, Peruvian, and Bolivian Amazon shows that the history and intensity of Brazil nut exploitation are major determinants of population size structure. Populations subjected to persistent levels o...

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Autor principal: Peres, Carlos A.
Outros Autores: Baider, Claudia, A., Zuidema, Pieter, Wadt, Lúcia Helena de Oliveira, Kainer, Karen A., Gomes-Silva, Daisy A.P., Salomão, Rafael Paiva, Simões, Luciana L., Franciosi, Eduardo R.N., Cornejo-Valverde, Fernando, Gribel, Rogério, Shepard, Glenn Harvey, Kanashiro, Milton, Coventry, Peter, Yu, Douglas W., Watkinson, Andrew R., Freckleton, Robert P.
Grau: Artigo
Idioma: English
Publicado em: Science 2020
Assuntos:
Nut
Nut
Acesso em linha: https://repositorio.inpa.gov.br/handle/1/18957
Resumo:
A comparative analysis of 23 populations of the Brazil nut tree (Bertholletia excelsa) across the Brazilian, Peruvian, and Bolivian Amazon shows that the history and intensity of Brazil nut exploitation are major determinants of population size structure. Populations subjected to persistent levels of harvest lack juvenile trees less than 60 centimeters in diameter at breast height; only populations with a history of either light or recent exploitation contain large numbers of juvenile trees. A harvesting model confirms that intensive exploitation levels over the past century are such that juvenile recruitment is insufficient to maintain populations over the long term. Without management, intensively harvested populations will succumb to a process of senescence and demographic collapse, threatening this cornerstone of the Amazonian extractive economy.