Abstract

Despite being one of the most heterogeneous Brazilian biomes, regardless of being the least known, the Caatinga is under strong anthropism. In this way the forest management offers techniques that, when used, guarantees the maintenance of the sustainability of the productive system, sustainability that is guaranteed through the resilience of the regenerative stratum. Thus the objective of this work was to evaluate the effect of forest management on natural regeneration in a caatinga area, under different cutting ages. The study was developed in the settlement of the agrarian reform, Brandão III, located in the city of Cuité-PB. To evaluate the natural regeneration, 40 plots measuring 5 × 5 m (25 m²) were randomly allocated within the plots exploited and in the Legal Reserve. All individuals with Circumference at baseline (CNB) ≤ 6 cm and with a minimum height of 0.5m were measured, and distributed in three height classes. A C1: 0.5 m < H < 0.99 m; C2: 1.0 m ≤ H < 1.99 m and C3: H > 2.0 m. The data of density, richness and number of individuals by type of regeneration origin were compared by the Tukey test at 5% significance. We sampled 2021 individuals, represented by 32 species, 27 genera distributed in 16 families. The exploration did not cause significant changes to the floristic composition nor to the richness of the species. The exploration and the time elapsed between the cut and the measurement influenced the increase of the density.

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