Redalyc.Vegetation of the Saladillo Area (Province of Santa Fe) in The
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Interciencia ISSN: 0378-1844 [email protected] Asociación Interciencia Venezuela Hilgert, Norma I.; Pensiero, José F.; Marino, Gustavo; Lewis, Juan P.; DAngelo, Carlos Vegetation of the saladillo area (province of Santa Fe) in the South of the Chaco, Argentina Interciencia, vol. 28, núm. 9, septiembre, 2003, pp. 512-520 Asociación Interciencia Caracas, Venezuela Disponible en: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=33908404 Cómo citar el artículo Número completo Sistema de Información Científica Más información del artículo Red de Revistas Científicas de América Latina, el Caribe, España y Portugal Página de la revista en redalyc.org Proyecto académico sin fines de lucro, desarrollado bajo la iniciativa de acceso abierto VEGETATION OF THE SALADILLO AREA (PROVINCE OF SANTA FE) IN THE SOUTH OF THE CHACO, ARGENTINA NORMA I. HILGERT, JOSÉ F. PENSIERO, GUSTAVO MARINO, JUAN P. LEWIS and CARLOS D’ANGELO he area of the Saladillos there is a winter drought of variable town of Helvecia there are important rice lies at the eastern part length (Cáceres, 1980). cropping areas. of the of Santa Fe prov- The area can be divided In this paper the vegeta- ince center, comprising the western into two main physiographic sectors, the tion of the Saladillo Rivers area is ana- halves of the Garay and San Javier de- old Paraná River terrace and the coastal lyzed, using numerical methods. Plant partments and small parts of other admin- levee. In the first one, predominant soils communities are determined and de- istrative units. At its western limits are are natracualfs, silty loam with sodium scribed. the Toba and Saladillo Amargo rivers, carbonate and high pH. On the coastal while at the eastern limit the Paraná levee predominant soils are cuarzipsam- Material and Methods River valley is located (Figure 1). The re- ment, sandy or sandy loams with low nu- gion consists of plains with a consider- trient levels (Orellana and Priano, 1978). Physiognomic units of able but gentle slope from NW to SE, The area is covered by landscape were determined with and without any important orographic or woodlands, savannas, tall grasslands and 1:150000, 1:50000 and 1:20000 aerial topographic accidents. Most of it is on some prairies and hydrophilous meadows. photographs and mapped on 1:100000 what the Paraná River bed was, which Ragonese (1941) places the area in the charts from the Instituto Geográfico Mi- was modified by an upward movement of region of “espinillares” (prickly mimosa litar. Then, a general survey of the area the bedrock during the Quaternary (Gras- forests), Parodi (1945) considered the was performed in order to define commu- sino, 1986; Iriondo, 1991). Several rivers area as Chaquenian, and Cabrera (1953; nities of dominance type (Whittaker, that flow from N to S to the Paraná 1976) included the northern portion in 1980), dividing the vegetation into for- River drain the area; the main ones are the Chaco and the southern portion in the ests, savannas and grasslands. the Saladillo Amargo and the Saladillo Thorn forest and scrub. During November and Dulce, whose names mean “Bitter Brack- The region is relatively December 1994, 123 plots (4x4m) of her- ish” and “Sweet Brackish”, as an allusion well preserved, although there have been baceous communities were analyzed. This to their water taste and composition. lumbering, grazing and agricultural ac- plot size was chosen according to Lewis The climate (Table I) is tivities, as well as man-made fires. The et al. (1990) as the minimum sampling humid to sub humid and warm to temper- extreme south is used for vegetable area for this kind of communities. In ate; rainfall is mainly during summer and crops, tomatoes and carrots. Near the each plot general descriptions of the veg- KEYWORDS / Argentina / Chaco / Forests / Grasslands / Savannas / Received: 04/23/2003. Modified: 08/25/2003. Accepted: 08/27/2003 Norma I. Hilgert. Dr., Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (UNC), Argentina. Professor and Researcher, Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas, Universidad Autónoma de Hidalgo, México. Researcher, CONICET, Ar- gentina. Address: Apartado Postal 69, Plaza Juárez, Pachuca, Hidalgo México C.P. 42001. e-mail: [email protected] José F. Pensiero. Dr., UNC. Professor, Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias, Universidad Nacional del Litoral (UNL), Argentina. Researcher, CONICET, Argentina. Gustavo Marino. Dr. in XX, Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, Argentina. Professor, Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias, UNL, Argentina. Juan P. Lewis. Ph.D., Cambridge University, England. Professor, Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias, Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Argentina. Researcher, CONICET Argentina. Carlos D’Angelo. M.Cs., Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Professor, Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias, UNL, Argentina. 512 0378-1844/03/09/512-10 $ 3. 00/0 SEP 2003, VOL. 28 Nº 9 TABLE I METEOROLOGICAL DATA* OF FIVE STATIONS AROUND THE SURVEYED DATA (1941-1960) Temperature (ºC) Rainfall Frost free period Meteorological Mean Av. min. Min. Av. max. Max. (mm) (days) stations Vera 19.6 13.3 -5.6 27.15 43.4 1051 322 Reconquista 20.3 - - 26.5 - 1105 - Esperanza 18.4 12.6 -6.2 25.65 43.9 946 227 Goya 20.6 15.3 - - - 1213 - La Paz 19.5 13.9 - 25.9 - 1065 - * Data from Servicio Meteorológico Nacional. Figure 2. PCA scatter diagram of forest Figure 3. DECORANA scatter diagram of plots on the plane of axes I and II. : “es- forest plots on the plane of the first two axes. pinillares, +: “algarrobales”, *: “quebra- : “espinillares, +: “algarrobales”, *: “que- chales”. brachales”. were ordered using a Detrend Correspon- (PCA), and classified according to Ward’s dence Analysis (DECORANA), and clas- method (McCune, 1993). In December sified with Ward’s Cluster analysis using 1995, the herbaceous layer was analyzed relative euclidean distance as a similarity in a similar way as the herbaceous com- measure (McCune, 1993). munities. According to their phy- Plant specimens were siognomic aspects and dominant species, determined and deposited in the her- 8 forest stands were selected during July barium of the Facultad de Agronomía y and August 1995. These stands were lo- Veterinaria, Universidad Nacional del cated in every low level disturbance area Litoral (Santa Fe). The nomenclature fol- found, without any recent anthropic activ- lows Zuloaga and Morrone (1994; 1996; ity, while areas that showed high frag- 1999). Figure 1. Map of the surveyed area. mentation or disturbance intensity were not considered as valid points for this Results etation and soil were recorded. All spe- study. The point-centered quarter method cies and their frequencies were recorded (Cottam and Curtis, 1956) was used to The PCA scatter dia- using the Braun-Blanquet (1979) cover- measure trees and shrubs. At each stand, gram of forest plots on the plane of axes abundance combined scale and then con- mean height and tree cover were as- I and II show three clusters arranged verted into the Westhoff and Van der sessed, together with total and layer flo- along a horseshoe gradient (Figure 2). Maarel (1980) scale. ristic richness and relative frequency of DECORANA analysis shows the same To avoid noise, 112 spe- each woody species. Vegetation profiles three clusters distributed according to a cies, which were found in less than 3 were made from 250m2 cartographic gradient along Axis I (Figure 3). The plots, were eliminated from the analysis quadrants (Davis and Richards, 1933; same three clusters can be recognized and an information matrix of 123 plots 1934). Data were analyzed using DECO- when the plots are classified with Ward’s and 165 species was constructed. Data RANA and Principal Component Analysis method (Figure 4). SEP 2003, VOL. 28 Nº 9 513 TABLE II ASSOCIATION TABLE OF FORESTS WOODY LAYERS SHOWING ABSOLUTE FREQUENCY OF EACH SPECIES ABC Tree species / Censuses 1 2 8 3 4 5 6 7 Acacia caven 73 72 38 1 9 Opuntia sp. 21 12 Geoffroea decorticans 13 29 21 7 19 3 2 Prosopis sp. 24625362516196 Celtis iguanaea 210311213 Schinus longifolia 1641782 Achatocarpus praecox 13 2 1 45 8 9 9 Sideroxylon obtusifolium 102147 Fagara rhoifolia 17 2 1 11 Aspidosperma quebracho-blanco 23 43 43 2 Prosopis affinis 1245 3 Acacia praecox 45621 Figure 4. Ward’s clustering technique den- Schinopsis balansae 16 13 5 drogram of woody plant communities. A: Scutia buxifolia 25 20 39 “espinillares”, B: “algarrobales”; C: “que- Stetsonia coryne 822 brachales”, the latter with variant C1: with Aspidosperma quebracho blanco and Proso- Capparis retusa 961 pis sp., and variant C2: with Eugenia uni- Eugenia uniflora 123 flora, Gleditsia amorphoides, Scutia buxi- Myrcianthes cisplatensis 31 folia and Hexachlamys edulis. Ruprechtia laxiflora 112 Phytolacca dioica 17 Acacia aroma 11 In most forests Geoffroea Carica quercifolia 10 decorticans, Prosopis sp., Achatocarpus Melia azederach 5 praecox, Celtis iguanaea and C. pallida are Ziziphus mistol 5 present and can be abundant. The first clus- Gleditsia amorphoides 4 ter (A) are “espinillares” where Acacia Hexachlamys edulis 8 caven predominates; the second (B) are Caesalpinia paraguariensis 2 “algarrobales” of Prosopis sp., which are floristically richer than the former cluster; Berberis ruscifolia 1 and the third (C) are “quebrachales” char- Erythrina crista-galli 5 acterized by the presence and abundance of Parkinsonia aculeate 3 Schinopsis balansae, Aspidosperma quebra- Specific Richness Trees 5 8 6 12 14 15 15 20 cho-blanco and Acacia praecox (Table II). Tree strata height (m) 6.75 7.75 6.5 14.35 16.65 17 17.8 16.2 The floristic richness of Shrub species