A INFLUÊNCIA DO ESTOQUE DE MATÉRIA ORGÂNICA DO SOLO EM FRAGMENTOS FLORESTAIS DE MATA ATLÂNTICA

In the Atlantic forest biome, very fragmented and with high diversity of ecosystems, of species, and high endemism degree, the maintenance of the status of the biological diversity presupposes the recovery and conservation of the mosaic of existent fragments. In that context, the use of global functional indicators for the evaluation of the state of conservation of fragments, for the character of systemic synthesis that they act becomes interesting. In tropical forests ecosystems, the surface organic matter stock of the soil is one functional indicator of the decomposition subsystem and they are responsible in big measured by the maintenance and survival of the communities of those ecosystems group. The human action when fragmenting the forest ecosystems, as it substitutes the native forest for different forms of use of the soil, it creates different head offices that they exercise pressures differentiated on the fragment and, consequently, on the operation of the fundamental processes of the ecosystem that represents it. Thus, in the sense of understanding the state of functional conservation of fragments forest remainders of the Atlantic forest, in the extent of the Environmental Protection Area of Petrópolis - Rio de Janeiro, which interferes in the Mosaic of Units of Conservation of the Fluminense Central Atlantic forest and, in a larger scale still, in the Ecological Corridor of the Serra do Mar, in the present study the stock of organic matter of surface of four forest fragments in summer of 2008 and summer of 2009 are analyzed comparatively.