TITLE:
Distribution Pattern of Trees in a Hydrological Gradient below the Paraná-Paraguay River Confluence
AUTHORS:
Sylvina Lorena Casco, Juan José Neiff
KEYWORDS:
Riverine Forests; River Pulse; Paraná Floodplain; Ecohydrology; Fluvial Landscape
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Plant Sciences,
Vol.4 No.3A,
March
29,
2013
ABSTRACT: Riparian and
riverine aquatic plant species have evolved within the context of flowing water
habitats for which the flooding and droughts are the forcing factors that shape
the community features, either through a positive or negative effect on the
ecosystem’s function, according to the timing, frequency and magnitude of such
events. In the Paraná floodplain landscape, topographic position is a crude
indicator of the position along the complex gradient, but it also includes
information about flood/drought periods and trees’ resilience to extreme
hydrological phases. We present the occurrence of major tree species in
riparian forests of the Paraná River on islands of different topographies in a
section of the Paraná River downstream from the confluence with the Paraguay River. Our results suggest that each tree
species had a preferred position in the topographic gradient, sites where the
observed counts were more frequent. This trees species were more frequent
between 2 and 8 m in the
topographic position and were affected by 5 and 202 hydrosedimentologic pulses
between 1949 and 1999. We suggest that knowledge of the distribution curves of
the vegetation species present can help draw possible future scenarios of the
river landscape. Future engineering works to alter the hydrological dynamics of
Paraná should pay more attention to the distribution of riparian forests
because they are indicators of changes at the landscape level and they are the
support for the wildlife of the river.