Biodiversity responses to restoration across the Brazilian Atlantic Forest

Author(s):Show less -

Romanelli, Joao Paulo ; Meli, Paula ; Bispo Santos, Joao Paulo ; Jacob, Igor Nogueira ; Souza, Lukas Rodrigues ; Rodrigues, Andre Vieira ; Trevisan, Diego Peruchi ; Huang, Chunbo ; Almeida, Danilo R. A. ; Silva, Luiz G. M. ; Lopes Assad, Maria Leonor R. C. ; Cadotte, Marc W. ; Rodrigues, Ricardo Ribeiro

• Document type: Journal article
• Source: Science of The Total Environment; v. 821, p. 10-pg., 2022-05-15.

Abstract

The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration is focussing attention and resources on restoration globally. Nowhere is this more crucial than in tropical forests that harbor immense biodiversity, but have also undergone widespread defores-tation over the past few decades. We performed a meta-analysis to investigate how biodiversity features respond to for -est restoration across the Brazilian Atlantic Forest (BAF), one of the most threatened biodiversity hotspots in the world. We assembled biodiversity in different metrics of structure and diversity features of three taxonomic groups (vascular plants, soil microorganisms, and invertebrates), generating a dataset with 2370 observations from 76 primary studies. We quantified the incomplete recovery of biodiversity (i.e., the rate of recovery to a pre-disturbance state) occurring during the restoration process, which we called the 'recovery gap'. Our results revealed that forests undergoing resto-ration in the BAF show a recovery gap of 34% for structure features and 22% for diversity features in comparison to reference reforests, considering all taxonomic groups investigated. For vascular plants, soil microorganisms, andinvertebrates the recovery gap ranged between 46 and 47%, 16-26%, and 4-7%, respectively. Overall, the recovery gap was influenced by the interaction of restoration actions (i.e., the past land use, restoration age and restoration approach - active and passive restoration), however, structure features responded more sensitively to the time elapsed since restoration started, while the recovery gap for diversity features depended more on the past land-use. Our study can help guide the prioritization of the aforenamed taxonomic groups in restoration, the regulation of potential biodiversity offsetting policies in the BAF, and understanding how coupled biodiversity features respond to the interaction of environmental conditions and restoration actions in a high fragmented tropical landscape. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 21/07958-1 - Understanding socio-ecological systems in restoration ecology from local to cosmopolitan and urban areas through evidence-based research
• Grantee: João Paulo Romanelli
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• FAPESP's process: 18/18416-2 - Understanding restored forests for benefiting people and nature - NewFor
• Grantee: Pedro Henrique Santin Brancalion
• Support Opportunities: BIOTA-FAPESP Program - Thematic Grants
• FAPESP's process: 20/08081-3 - New forests: potential and contributions to biodiversity conservation
• Grantee: João Paulo Bispo Santos
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• FAPESP's process: 19/08533-4 - Understanding ecological and social aspects of restoration actions in tropical regions through systematic reviews and meta-analyses
• Grantee: João Paulo Romanelli
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• FAPESP's process: 18/21338-3 - Monitoring forest landscape restoration from unmanned aerial vehicles using Lidar and hyperspectral remote sensing
• Grantee: Danilo Roberti Alves de Almeida
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• FAPESP's process: 13/50718-5 - Ecological restoration of riparian forests, native forest of economic production and of degraded forest fragments (in APP and RL) based on restoration ecology of reference ecosystems in order to scientifically test the precepts of the New Brazilian Forest Code
• Grantee: Ricardo Ribeiro Rodrigues
• Support Opportunities: BIOTA-FAPESP Program - Thematic Grants