Integrating public engagement to intensify pollination services through ecological restoration.

Globally, human activities impose threats to nature and the provision of ecosystem services, such as pollination. In this context, ecological restoration provides opportunities to create managed landscapes that maximize biodiversity conservation and sustainable agriculture, e.g., via provision of pollination services. Managing pollination services and restoration opportunities requires the engagement of distinct stakeholders embedded in diverse social institutions. Nevertheless, frameworks toward sustainable agriculture often overlook how stakeholders interact and access power in social arenas. We present a perspective integrating pollination services, ecological restoration, and public engagement for biodiversity conservation and agricultural production. We highlight the importance of a comprehensive assessment of pollination services, restoration opportunities identification, and a public engagement strategy anchored in institutional analysis of the social arenas involved in restoration efforts. Our perspective can therefore guide the implementation of practices from local to country scales to enhance biodiversity conservation and sustainable agriculture.

Ephemeral forest regeneration limits carbon sequestration potential in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest.

Although deforestation remains widespread in the tropics, many places are now experiencing significant forest recovery (i.e., forest transition), offering an optimistic outlook for natural ecosystem recovery and carbon sequestration. Naturally regenerated forests, however, may not persist, so a more nuanced understanding of the drivers of forest change in the tropics is critical to ensure the success of reforestation efforts and carbon sequestration targets. Here we use 35 years of detailed land cover data to investigate forest trajectories in 3014 municipalities in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest (AF), a biodiversity and conservation hotspot. Although deforestation was evident in some regions, deforestation reversals, the typical forest transition trajectory, were the prevalent trend in the AF, accounting for 38% of municipalities. However, simultaneous reforestation reversals in the region (13% of municipalities) suggest that these short-term increases in native forest cover do not necessarily translate into persistent trends. In the absence of reversals in reforestation, forests in the region could have sequestered 1.75 Pg C, over three times the actual estimated carbon sequestration (0.52 Pg C). We also showed that failure to distinguish native and planted forests would have masked native forest cover loss in the region and overestimated reforestation by 3.2 Mha and carbon sequestration from natural forest regeneration by 0.37 Pg C. Deforestation reversals were prevalent in urbanized municipalities with limited forest cover and high agricultural productivity, highlighting the importance of favorable socioeconomic conditions in promoting reforestation. Successful forest restoration efforts will require development and enforcement of environmental policies that promote forest regeneration and ensure the permanence of regrowing forests. This is crucial not only for the fate and conservation of the AF, but also for other tropical nations to achieve their restoration and carbon sequestration commitments.

Areas Requiring Restoration Efforts are a Complementary Opportunity to Support the Demand for Pollination Services in Brazil.

Crop pollination is one of Nature's Contributions to People (NCP) that reconciles biodiversity conservation and agricultural production. NCP benefits vary across space, including among distinct political-administrative levels within nations. Moreover, initiatives to restore ecosystems may enhance NCP provision, such as crop pollination delivered by native pollinators. We mapped crop pollination demand (PD), diversity of pollinator-dependent crops, and vegetation deficit (VD) (vis-a-vis Brazilian legal requirements) across all 5570 municipalities in Brazil. Pollinator-dependent crops represented ∼55% of the annual monetary value of agricultural production and ∼15% of the annual crop production. Municipalities with greater crop PD (i.e., higher degree of pollinator dependence of crop production) also had greater VD, associated with large properties and monocultures. In contrast, municipalities with a greater diversity of pollinator-dependent crops and predominantly small properties presented a smaller VD. Our results support that ecological restoration prompted by legal requirements offers great potential to promote crop productivity in larger properties. Moreover, conservation of vegetation remnants could support food security in small properties. We provided the first steps to identify spatial patterns linking biodiversity conservation and pollination service. Using Brazilian legal requirements as an example, we show that land-use management policies may be successfully used to ensure agricultural sustainability and crop production.

Hidden destruction of older forests threatens Brazil's Atlantic Forest and challenges restoration programs.

Understanding the dynamics of native forest loss and gain is critical for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services, especially in regions experiencing intense forest transformations. We quantified native forest cover dynamics on an annual basis from 1990 to 2017 in Brazil's Atlantic Forest. Despite the relative stability of native forest cover during this period (~28 Mha), the ongoing loss of older native forests, mostly on flatter terrains, have been hidden by the increasing gain of younger native forest cover, mostly on marginal lands for mechanized agriculture. Changes in native forest cover and its spatial distribution increased forest isolation in 36.4% of the landscapes. The clearance of older forests associated with the recut of 27% of younger forests has resulted in a progressive rejuvenation of the native forest cover. We highlight the need to include native forest spatiotemporal dynamics into restoration programs to better estimate their expected benefits and unexpected problems.

The suggestion that landscapes should contain 40% of forest cover lacks evidence and is problematic.

A recent review suggests that forest cover needs to be restored or maintained on at least 40% of land area. In the absence of empirical evidence to support this threshold, we discuss how this suggestion is unhelpful and potentially dangerous. We advocate for regionally defined thresholds to inform conservation and restoration.

Safeguarding Ecosystem Services: A Methodological Framework to Buffer the Joint Effect of Habitat Configuration and Climate Change.

Ecosystem services provided by mobile agents are increasingly threatened by the loss and modification of natural habitats and by climate change, risking the maintenance of biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and human welfare. Research oriented towards a better understanding of the joint effects of land use and climate change over the provision of specific ecosystem services is therefore essential to safeguard such services. Here we propose a methodological framework, which integrates species distribution forecasts and graph theory to identify key conservation areas, which if protected or restored could improve habitat connectivity and safeguard ecosystem services. We applied the proposed framework to the provision of pollination services by a tropical stingless bee (Melipona quadrifasciata), a key pollinator of native flora from the Brazilian Atlantic Forest and important agricultural crops. Based on the current distribution of this bee and that of the plant species used to feed and nest, we projected the joint distribution of bees and plants in the future, considering a moderate climate change scenario (following IPPC). We then used this information, the bee's flight range, and the current mapping of Atlantic Forest remnants to infer habitat suitability and quantify local and regional habitat connectivity for 2030, 2050 and 2080. Our results revealed north to south and coastal to inland shifts in the pollinator distribution during the next 70 years. Current and future connectivity maps unraveled the most important corridors, which if protected or restored, could facilitate the dispersal and establishment of bees during distribution shifts. Our results also suggest that coffee plantations from eastern São Paulo and southern Minas Gerais States could suffer a pollinator deficit in the future, whereas pollination services seem to be secured in southern Brazil. Landowners and governmental agencies could use this information to implement new land use schemes. Overall, our proposed methodological framework could help design novel conservational and agricultural practices that can be crucial to conserve ecosystem services by buffering the joint effect of habitat configuration and climate change.

Conservation economics. Response to Comment on "Using ecological thresholds to evaluate the costs and benefits of set-asides in a biodiversity hotspot".

Finney claims that we did not include transaction costs while assessing the economic costs of a set-aside program in Brazil and that accounting for them could potentially render large payments for environmental services (PES) projects unfeasible. We agree with the need for a better understanding of transaction costs but provide evidence that they do not alter the feasibility of the set-aside scheme we proposed.

Using ecological thresholds to evaluate the costs and benefits of set-asides in a biodiversity hotspot.

Ecological set-asides are a promising strategy for conserving biodiversity in human-modified landscapes; however, landowner participation is often precluded by financial constraints. We assessed the ecological benefits and economic costs of paying landowners to set aside private land for restoration. Benefits were calculated from data on nearly 25,000 captures of Brazilian Atlantic Forest vertebrates, and economic costs were estimated for several restoration scenarios and values of payment for ecosystem services. We show that an annual investment equivalent to 6.5% of what Brazil spends on agricultural subsidies would revert species composition and ecological functions across farmlands to levels found inside protected areas, thereby benefiting local people. Hence, efforts to secure the future of this and other biodiversity hotspots may be cost-effective.