Transporte "Lateral" de Fósforo pela Megafauna na Amazônia
- Vini
- 15 de jul. de 2015
- 1 min de leitura
Publicado na revista Nature Geoscience, o artigo intitulado: The legacy of the Pleistocene megafauna extinctions on nutrient availability in Amazonia trata dos efeitos da extinção em massa ocorrida cerca de 12 mil anos atras da megafauna, como o gliptodonte e a preguiça gigante (foto ao lado), sobre o empobrecimento dos solos da amazônia do elemento fósforo, principalmente na região leste da bacia.
A seguir encontra-se o resumo do artigo disponibilizado pelo site da revista: In the late Pleistocene, 97 genera of large animals went extinct, concentrated in the Americas and Australia1. These extinctions had significant effects on ecosystem structure2, seed dispersal3 and land surface albedo4. However, the impact of this dramatic extinction on ecosystem nutrient biogeochemistry, through the lateral transport of dung and bodies, has never been explored. Here we analyse this process using a novel mathematical framework that analyses this lateral transport as a diffusion-like process, and we demonstrate that large animals play a disproportionately large role in the horizontal transfer of nutrients across landscapes. For example, we estimate that the extinction of the Amazonian megafauna decreased the lateral flux of the limiting nutrient phosphorus by more than 98%, with similar, though less extreme, decreases in all continents outside of Africa. This resulted in strong decreases in phosphorus availability in eastern Amazonia away from fertile floodplains, a decline which may still be ongoing. The current P limitation in the Amazon basin may be partially a relic of an ecosystem without the functional connectivity it once had. We argue that the Pleistocene megafauna extinctions resulted in large and ongoing disruptions to terrestrial biogeochemical cycling at continental scales and increased nutrient heterogeneity globally.
Para obter o artigo, basta clicar no link da revista: Nature Geoscience
Comments