Resposta da produtividade em diferentes paisagens na caatinga frente a distúrbios climáticos.

Abstract

Models suggest that climate change-induced drought events push dryland regions to cross biophysical thresholds, and it causes a long-term drop in the productive capacity. Since the landscape structure influences their production capacity and resilience under climate disturbances, we tested the hypothesis that landscapes with intermediate complexity can reorganize their productive capacity after climate disturbance better than landscapes with low complexity. In our study, landscapes with intermediate complexity keep agricultural and natural cover, while simple landscapes are covered by monoculture or pastures. We used data from Cariri paraibano in the Caatinga region, South America’s largest dryland, for ten years (2010- 2019), covering periods before, during, and after of one of the worst drought disturbances. Different from expected, our findings show that all landscapes with distinct structural complexities can re-organize their productive capacity after climate disturbance in Caatinga semiarid region. However, the impact in productive capacity during climate disturbance is influenced by landscape complexity, and the total productive capacity also depends on landscape structure. More complex landscapes have three times more production capacity of biomass than simple landscapes, and the difference on the productivity is exacerbated during drought disturbance periods. Contrasting from other regions, simple landscapes do not seem to provide a greater amount of provisioning services like food in drylands. Therefore, keeping landscapes with intermediate complexity integrating natural land and sustainable agricultural systems demonstrate to cope with drought and contribute to food security in dryland regions. So, landscape planning with ecosystem services is urgent to lead productive, sustainable, and resilient landscapes in tropical drylands.