Abstract
Forest restoration is a strategy to reverse forest loss and degradation. We overviewed deforestation in the period 1975–2018 in the Brazilian Amazon and the projects, techniques, and scientific publications conducted to recover forest in the area by 2019. We used GIS to assess forest loss and a systematic data collection gathered from 12 universities, five major environmental agencies, and an ad-hoc bibliographic survey that rendered information from 405 restoration projects and 152 published studies. The Brazilian Amazon has undergone an accelerated deforestation in the last 43 years, resulting in 20% (788,353 km2) of its territory deforested by 2018. Deforestation rate was 27,033 km2 yr−1 between 1975 and 1987 and 14,542 km2 yr−1 between 1988 and 2018 (1.97% yr−1 of forest loss between 1975 and 2018). In 2018, 41 Amazonian municipalities were classified as priority areas for monitoring and control deforestation and 21 additional municipalities were deemed as areas with controlled deforestation. Our survey identified 405 projects of forest restoration in 191 municipalities between 1950 and 2017. The majority (229) of these projects used seedling planting as the main forest restoration technique. Forest restoration projects based upon agroforestry systems (144), assisted natural regeneration (27), and natural regeneration (5) were also identified. Despite a considerable number of projects and publications, the region still lacks scientific studies that reinforce the choice of best practices for forest restoration, and the information currently available is not enough to quantify what has already been recovered or the potential area to be restored.
Highlights
Human activities have resulted in large worldwide extents of forest loss and degradation (Kindermann et al 2008; Hansen et al 2013) and the associated loss of biodiversity, functions and ecosystem services such as water provision, nutrient cycling and climate regulation (Thompson et al 2013)
Our overview of forest loss and restoration in the Brazilian Amazon hinted enormous deforestation rates starting in the 1970s and efforts to reverse this deforestation by means of forest restoration projects that were partly triggered by scientific and technical published research
Other studies have pointed to high deforestation rates in the Amazonia (Souza Jr et al 2013; Barber et al 2014) and in other areas of Central and South America (Steininger et al 2001; Echeverría et al 2006; Armenter and Romero 2006; Swenson et al 2011)
Summary
Human activities have resulted in large worldwide extents of forest loss and degradation (Kindermann et al 2008; Hansen et al 2013) and the associated loss of biodiversity, functions and ecosystem services such as water provision, nutrient cycling and climate regulation (Thompson et al 2013). A number of forest restoration techniques and methods have stemmed from different professional guilds including silviculturists, agroforesters and ecologists (Sarr and Puettmann 2008; Stanturf et al 2014a). Landscape forest restoration is mostly based upon active revegetation (Ciccarese et al 2012; Gilman et al 2016), natural regeneration or mixed approaches, which can be accomplished by planting seedlings of native and/or exotic species, natural regeneration, assisted natural regeneration, or establishing agroforestry systems (Stanturf et al 2014a; Macdonald et al 2015; Viani et al 2017). The most currently used technique beyond natural regeneration to restore deforested areas is seedling planting (Palma and Laurance 2015; Grossnickle and Ivetic 2017; Freitas et al 2019)
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