Plasticidade fenotípica de oito espécies arbóreas nativas em resposta à adição de nutrientes no solo.

Abstract

Deforestation is a significant environmental challenge that drives efforts to restore degraded ecosystems. The complexity of forest ecosystems, with abiotic and biotic factors, highlights the importance of understanding the responses of tree species in degraded areas. The application of fertilizer as a prior soil management practice can be an effective strategy, exerting a strong influence on the growth of plants reintroduced in restoration projects, while understanding the functional attributes of plants throughout development contributes to clarifying ecological processes, such as interactions between species and community dynamics. This study evaluated the development of eight native tree species in response to different levels of nutrient addition to the soil, namely: no nutrient addition (CT); addition of 25 g of limestone and 2 g of NPK (10–10–10) (QuB); addition of 25 g of limestone and 20 g of NPK (10–10–10) (QuA); replacing 1/6 of the soil in the bag volume with tanned cattle manure (EsB) and replacing 1/3 of the soil in the bag volume with tanned cattle manure (EsA), this experiment was carried out in a nursery at the Federal University of São Carlos and these analyzes are part of a broader project carried out in 2019. Our study showed that organic fertilizer treatments (EsB and EsA) were the most positively impacted by the availability of nutrients, in particular, organic matter, phosphorus, cation exchange capacity , base summation and base saturation, resulting in larger plants. The root mass fraction was also strongly influenced by fertilization, the allocation of biomass to the roots was lower in treatments with organic fertilization and higher in the rest of the treatments. In the EsA treatment, an exponential relationship was found between the height of the plants and the size of their seeds, larger seeds generated smaller plants and smaller seeds generated larger plants. Understanding the soil and how it relates to functional traits can be very useful in predicting the response of plants to environmental conditions in degraded areas where they have been reintroduced, helping to plan more efficient forest restoration strategies and decision-making.