*Physical Quality of Soils in a Toposequence of a Forest Fragment under Livestock Activity… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.106560*

According to Han et al. [20], pores derived from biological activity (or biopores) formed by the mineralization of the root system and organisms of the soil macrofauna. It is important to understand that vegetables and animals produce biopores and other various ecosystem services to the rural property ecosystem, as shown in **Table 1**. In addition to the roots, soil fauna produces biopores. This soil fauna includes microscopic organisms, such as nematodes, mites, and colêmbolos, to easily visible organisms, such as earthworms, spiders, ants, termites, and beetles [21].

With compaction, there are changes in the distribution of soil aggregate size, changes in macroporosity and microporosity, increased mechanical impediment, decreased pore continuity, loss of water retention and infiltration capacity, weak internal drainage, and increased heat conduction. All these environmental impacts promoted by compaction affect soil quality, whether an agricultural soil of cultivation or pasture, as in the forest soils of this study.


*Adapted from Parron et al. [21] according to Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005).*

#### **Table 1.**

*Ecosystem services of soil fauna.*

There are few studies on soil quality within native forests in Brazil. Thus, there is a need to evaluate the environmental impacts of livestock on forest soils, in a context of producing with good environmental practices and with social, economic, and environmental sustainability. For this, the objective was to evaluate soil physics parameters in soil toposequence shards in fragments of native forests with and without livestock, on the banks of the watercourse toward the top of the hill in a part of the Arroio Pelotas watershed, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, and in the extreme south of Brazil (**Figure 1**).
