Post-agriculture versus post-hurricane succession in southeastern Nicaraguan rain forest

Abstract

Wecompared five-year old forests developing after agriculture to those recoveringfrom Hurricane Joan (1988) and to the pre-hurricane forest, at two sites intropical rain forest in southeastern Nicaragua. We used non-parametric clusteranalysis to group transects by their species compositions, and compared theirspecies richness, estimated total species richness, dominance, density andbasalarea. Post-agriculture transects showed distinctive species compositions andlower diversity than post-hurricane transects, which were in turn more similarto the pre-hurricane forest. These results are similar to those found by otherresearchers in the Amazon and in Puerto Rico. Land use history was moreimportant than proximity in the landscape in determining the composition andstructure of post-disturbance forests in this region.