Assessing ecological communities in the wake of ongoing land use change in the Atlantic Forest and Pantanal of Brazil

Abstract. Globally, land use change (LUC) is responsible for 20% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, widespread losses of ecosystem services and biodiversity, and erosion of ecosystem resilience to disturbance and climate change. Although LUC has peaked in developed northern temperate countries, it is ongoing in wilderness-rich equatorial countries, where economic and governmental incentives continue to drive expansion of agricultural development and natural resource extraction. In Brazil, vast tracts of tropical forest and other types of natural vegetation cover have been (and are being) replaced by crops and planted exotic (non-native) pasture, the latter for livestock rearing. I investigated how a range of ecological communities are being affected by ongoing LUC in two Neotropical biomes, the Atlantic Forest and Pantanal of Brazil. My objectives were to: (1) help understand the consequences of LUC, (2) provide baselines for current and future monitoring studies, and (3) help prioritize conservation actions. The Atlantic Forest, which originally covered 1.5 million km2 of eastern Brazil, is a biodiversity hotspot with a range of tropical forest formations and a high proportion of endemic species. Five-hundred years of LUC, including coffee and sugarcane cultivation, timber extraction, wood charcoal production for industry, and urban development, shrank forested area to 11% of original coverage, creating a highly-fragmented landscape of mostly small (