1.

Generally, a very hard thing to accomplish, regrowth from cleared land is an object we as a group would like to see. Then, not only could we protect the rainforest and fight a battle of attrition, but we might actually replace the lost territory. That means we can create the richness, the full flavor of the forest. So, no matter how slim a chance, any type of regrowth effort or study could be put to very good use. This coupled with the study on planting of shoots and other regenerative properties of some flora, we might be able to successfully enact a proactive rainforest growth project. The study highlights the main biotic and abiotic factors that influence the patterns of Neotropical secondary forest successions, referred as the woody vegetation that regrows after complete forest clearance due to human activities. It focuses on both patterns of species replacement and various processes that occur during succession, and suggest that the sequence of processes may be predictable even if species composition is not.

    
Tropical secondary forests are important as timber sources, providers of environmental services such as protection from erosion and atmospheric carbon fixation templates for forest rehabilitation, refuge of plant biodiversity in fragmented landscapes, and as local providers of medicinal and useful plants. In addition, the area of tropical secondary forest is predicted to increase in the next century due to industrialization and urbanization processes, which often lead to an abandonment of agricultural activities. Because of fast-growing properties of secondary forests and the current pressures on old-growth forests in many Neotropical locations, they hold enormous but yet untapped management potential. Although we recognize those legal aspects as well as technical and political interventions play a key role in influencing secondary forest utilization in the Neotropics, there is still a tremendous need to understand and further refine our knowledge of ecological processes involved in secondary succession, so that such processes can be adequately considered in the management of this resource.

Secondary forest succession has been extensively described throughout the lowland Neotropics for many decades  and understanding how forests recover after clearance is still a current research topic both for basic and applied purposes  Most commonly, the structural characteristics of the developing forest 9e.g., basal area, biomass, species richness, and species composition) are studied, and occasionally functional characteristics are measured. This bias has allowed secondary forests to be relatively well defined from a structural perspective, relative to old growth conditions. Despite the theoretical framework, there has been little scientific integration of the structural and functional characteristics and processes that occur during secondary succession. Much of the emphasis in secondary succession has focused on which species or group of species dominate which stages of succession. From a functional perspective, however, ecosystems may recover functions long before they recover, if any, floristic similarity to previous conditions. For example, growth of roots, regardless of species, may serve to reduce soil erosion and allow plants to uptake nutrients that might otherwise be leached. In addition, recovery of leaf area through the growth of the forest canopy casts shade, reducing soil temperature and soil water evaporation. This functional perspective to examining succession stems from the hypothesis that there is ecological redundancy among plant species, i.e., from an ecosystem standpoint many plant species can perform similar functions. Thus another way to approach secondary forest succession is to ask when ecosystem function returns to pre-disturbance levels.

In general terms, secondary forest succession is influenced by stochasticity, a species' biology, and its interaction with other species (either between plants, or between plant and animals), and by the interplay of biotic and abiotic components (vegetation and climate). All these factors ultimately determine a particular floristic composition at a given age (stage) and also influence the degree of structural and functional recovery of the original vegetation. Therefore, secondary forest succession can be visualized as a continuum from an early stage where the factors that govern colonization are most important (i.e., substrate conditions for germination, timing of seed arrival via off-site dispersal, presence of soil-stored seeds and resprouts), to later stages where competitive ability and tolerance of environmental conditions among species (determined primarily by species-specific growth rates, longevity, maximum size at maturity, and degree of shade tolerance) largely dictate patterns of species replacement over time (Walker and Chapin, 1987).