This study represents a rapid assessment approach on the composition of soil seed banks in the Atlantic rainforest in Brazil and therefore marks a tool for the fast estimation of one important aspect of the regeneration ability of forest sites with different disturbance histories.The project was carried out in a private reserve in the state of Rio de Janeiro, where research plots were established in three different forest sites: in continuous forest where selective logging took place, in forest regrowth after complete cutdown about 60 years ago and in a forest fragment. Additionally data from another forest remnant in this region were added to compare especially the results concerning the influence of fragmentation processes on soil seed bank structure.With remarkably less sampling effort compared to germination experiments the sieving method is resulting in a fast gain of information on this particular topic which still is comparable to already published results.Every investigation site in our study differs considerably in soil seed bank composition concerning their disturbance history. Furthermore coherences between canopy structure and the density of small-sized seeds in the soil, as well as edge effects within the forest fragments were observed. We recognised a higher amount of small seeds under more open canopy conditions in general and discovered trends of higher species richness near the forest boundary in the forest fragments.This rapid assessment approach might be an easy to handle tool and a practical alternative to more extensive germination experiments for upcoming investigations on the regeneration capability in highly fragmented and disturbed landscapes like the Atlantic rainforest.