Artificial reservoirs affect tree functional components of tropical dry forests

Abstract

Reservoir construction is one of the main ways humans alter ecosystems by damming rivers. Understanding how reservoir dams affect forests is essential once they are usually in the highest impact areas of the world. We aimed to evaluate to what extent an artificial reservoir affected changes in the structure, species diversity and components of functional diversity of a tropical dry forest after 10 years of the dam construction. In the patches of the tropical dry forest we present dynamic data of 120 permanent plots that were far (> 700 m) from the watercourse before damming and are now on the edge of it (0 to 60 m). We evaluated how changes in community structure, taxonomy diversity and functional components were related with distance of the reservoir shorelines. Plots closer to the reservoir showed higher increase in functional diversity but do not showed significant relationships with taxonomy diversity. Plots closer to the reservoir also showed higher decrease in wood density (related to high water availability), higher decrease in specific leaf area, and increase in compoundness (possible due to increase in light incidence due to reservoir edge). Our results suggest that reservoirs can alter functionality of tropical dry forests over time and highlight the importance of more studies relating these changes with demographic process.