Regeneration with or without seedling management: Serra do Mar slope, São Sebastião/SP

The survival of forest communities is based on the seedling bank, since the greater the diversity, the greater the probability of heterospecific replacements. This work aimed to verify, through the species composition, if there is natural regeneration of the clearing with and without management and if it is possible that the clearing regeneration occurs without the management. The study site covered a clearing and a fragment of the Atlantic Forest Biome, in the municipality of São Sebastião/SP, north coast of the state of São Paulo. Ten subplots of 0.5 m x 1.0 m were installed randomly in 8 transects of 2.0 m x 50.0 m, with and without seedling management, where the set of seedlings with up to 20 cm was sampled. At the end of the study, 266 individuals were found, grouped into 38 families and 5 life forms (arboreal, shrub, herbaceous, epiphyte and liana), later classified into: 45 species (60.81%), 23 genera (31.08%) and 6 families (8.10%). Myrtaceae and Rubiaceae stood out as the most species-rich families, with 8 and 6 species, respectively. In the clearing, 22.2% of the sampled species were found, while 77.8% belonged to the forest. The difference between the number of species in the clearing and in the forest fragment suggests that the invasive species Melinis minutiflora and Scleria plusiophylla can hinder the establishment of seeds, preventing the germination of native species. Therefore, for the clearing regeneration process to occur faster, human intervention is necessary in the management of invasive species. Accordingly, the elaboration of a revegetation project withmonitoring and evaluation of the area of study was emphasized.