Forest Recovery in Newly Abandoned Pastures in Southern Brazil: Implications for the Atlantic Rain Forest Resilience

habitat for plant establishment (Guggenberg & Zech 1999). Recovering previous environmental conditions and limiting grasses growth are two of the most difficult steps to restore abandoned pastures. The intensity of soil use for pasture may determine the time for the forest regeneration (Liebsch et al. 2008). For instance, in strongly disturbed soils by pasture, the seed bank is affected (Gomez-Pompa & Vázquez-Yanes 1981), seedling establishment and growth is altered (Uhl et al. 1988) and the succession process leads to an undesired forest structure (Pascarella et al. 2004). Loosing resilience limits the ecosystem recovery, then demanding the use of restoration practices to rescue the structure and functio