Suggesting priority areas in the buffer zone of Serra do Brigadeiro State Park for forest restoration compensatory to bauxite mining in Southeast Brazil

Abstract

Prioritizing is essential to optimize resource allocation and restoration benefits. Bauxite mining is an important economic activity in the Zona da Mata region of Minas Gerais state, Southeast Brazil. The exploitation process of this ore creates demands for compensatory forest restoration, which may be directed to key areas for conservation such as the Buffer Zone of the Serra do Brigadeiro State Park (BZ-SBSP).The objective of this study was to propose a new application of Multicriteria Evaluation based on Geographic Information Systems (MCE-GIS) to suggest priority areas for compensatory forest restoration in BZ-SBSP by using criteria important at the landscape level and in the field. The modeling of priority areas followed a suitability scale approach, which varied from 0 to 255, using five factors: permanent preservation areas, slope, land use and land cover, distance from conserved forest fragments and ecological corridors. The factors were aggregated under three different risk scenarios: Weighted Linear Combination (WLC), low risk Ordered Weighted Average (OWA) and high-risk OWA. Suitability increased with the risk assumed in the analysis. The area corresponding to the very high priority class increased from 0.31% in the most conservative scenario to 10.72% in the riskiest scenario. The high-risk OWA scenario can be considered the best alternative for presenting a greater number of viable options and high suitability in at least some factors. The maps generated in this study may support multiple stakeholders to identify and direct resources to high priority sites. It is important to highlight that a set of economic, social, and technical factors may still restrict the restoration of an area indicated as high priority. Thus, this study can be considered as general guidelines for restoration planning, suggesting areas that should result in greater benefits derived from forest restoration and in greater success of the projects, when considering the landscape of interest, its integrity and other relevant aspects that should be considered in a restoration project.