Slow secondary succession in an 80-year-old neotropical urban forest after abandonment of coffee plantation

Abandoned agricultural plantations are the main secondary forest areas in the Atlantic Forest at Southeastern Brazil. The dominance of early-stage species is one of the main characteristics of these areas. Here, we analysed the floristic and structural changes after seven years (2012–2019) of monitoring in an 80-year-old secondary urban forest regenerated after abandonment of coffee plantation and hypothesise that the community will present a fast dynamic, with high growth and mortality rates and species turnover, due to the hyperdominance of pioneer species. Our dataset covers a 1-ha sampling effort where we measured all tree individuals with DBH ≥ 5 cm. We did not find relevant changes in species composition, species richness and species diversity indexes. The community also did not show relevant changes in the species Importance Value (IV). The mortality (3.21%.year⁻¹) and recruitment (2.28%.year⁻¹) rates are among those typically observed in other studies of secondary forest dynamics within the Atlantic Forest biome. The gain (3.00%.year⁻¹) surpassed the loss (2.50%.year⁻¹) in the basal area. Overall, despite the hyperdominance of pioneer and early stages species, no major structural changes were observed in the community, contrary to the initial hypothesis. The transition from successional stages is following its course very slowly, and with a tendency for the community to remain floristically stable for decades. This differs from the general pattern in other studies on Neotropical seasonal forests in abandoned agricultural landscapes, and shows the need for management for a more accelerated forest succession in urban landscapes.