Recovery of biomass and tree diversity along a forest restoration continuum

Abstract

The Atlantic Forest of Brazil is a top global hotspot for the restoration of tropical rainforest landscapes. Since mid-2010's, there have been a net increase in native forest cover and a fast expansion of eucalypt plantations, indicating that this region is an approaching an advanced stage of forest transition (Rosa et al. 2021). However, rather than the old-growth native forest remnants that once covered the region before deforestation, the new forest cover is now composed by a heterogeneous mosaic of different tree cover types. Understanding the particular contributions of each FLR approach in each socioecological condition is then critical to uncovering the real contributions of restoration for human wellbeing and conservation. At the same time, it would allow to decipher some rules of thumb of restoration practice and offer a more robust menu of options for restoration practitioners to select the restoration approaches that better match their restoration conditions and expected benefits. With these premises in mind, the project "Understanding restored forest benefits for nature and people - NewFor" was established, and have accumulated data for more than 700 plots across the state of São Paulo, which includes nearly 1,200 tree species, ~80,000 stems and ~50,000 trees, and obtained lidar data for ~400,000 hectares. The bulk of data analysis, publications, and policy recommendations of the project are about to start, as data collection has finished, and the dataset is ready to use for evaluating the central research questions of the project regarding the recovery of biomass and tree diversity across a continuum of restoration approaches.