BIOTA PARTNERSHIPS
NWO – Ecosystems Restoration
The Bonn challenge calls for the restoration of 150 million hectares of the world’s deforested and degraded land by 2020 and 350 million by 2030. It is a scientific challenge to provide knowledge-based guidelines for lasting restoration of ecosystems and the services they provide.
This challenge is not limited to a specific country or region; it is a worldwide issue that should be tackled in cooperation, bringing together different countries, research institutes, public and private organizations and research disciplines.
NewFor – Understanding restored forests for benefiting people and nature
NewFor is a research project that aims to understand restored forests for benefiting nature and people. The project objective is to assess the multifunctionality of different types of forests in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, supporting large-scale Atlantic forest restoration. This information will both support guidelines for effective and goal-oriented forest restoration, and provide alternative landscape developments, based on well understood synergies and trade-offs between the various landscape functions, and thereby promote a sustainable future of the Atlantic Forest region.
Esalq/USP & Wageningen University
ReSeed – The contribution of plant-animal interactions to biodiversity and ecosystem restoration of the Atlantic Forest
Across the world old-growth forests are rapidly diminishing due to anthropogenic forest conversion. Simultaneously, forest recovery in human-modified landscapes has led to an increase of secondary forests, which may have the potential to mitigate loss of biodiversity and provide important ecosystem services. This project therefore addresses the complex interactions between plants and animals that enable ecosystem functioning and the provisioning of ecosystem functioning including carbon sequestration. Specifically, we will characterize plant-frugivore interactions across second-growth forest fragments differing in age and landscape connectivity in the São Paulo Atlantic forest region. Based on our findings, we will identify priority areas within the Atlantic forest region that are most suitable for natural regeneration, and develop restoration guidelines to promote plant-frugivore interactions that enhance biodiversity and carbon sequestration where needed.
IB/UNESP Rio Claro & Utrecht University
coming soon
coming soon
BioFor – Applying the biotic soil legacy approach to understand positive-negative biota interactions for direct forest restoration from plant-soil communities feedbacks
Plants and soils are in constant interaction, and net effects of all physical, chemical and biological processes that contribute to these interactions are resulting in a so-called ‘plant-soil feedback’ that is known to be critical for the restoration of original plant communities and ecosystem properties. Our aim is to investigate how plant-soil feedbacks operate in primary and secondary Atlantic Forest, and how feedbacks in currently de-forested areas may influence opportunities for successful restoration of original tree species diversity and forest ecosystem functioning. Data on disturbed areas with less or more suitable opportunities for plant-soil feedback interactions to forest plant/tree species will allow us to advice how to improve and speed up an Atlantic Forest restoration.
CENA/USP & Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
coming soon
coming soon
GoFor – Governing the Atlantic Forest transition: improving our knowledge on forest recovery for ecosystem services
The historical decline of the Atlantic Forest area in Brazil has now transitioned into a modest forest increase. The underlined voluntary nature of reforestation activities by landscape actors poses a large challenge to reforestation policy goals, since the vast agricultural areas in the state of Sao Paulo have a strong restorative effect on land rent prices. In the context of a landscape approach, governance of ecosystem services requires the creation of shared rules among landscape actors that should lead to fair and sustainable use of ecosystem services. To improve the effectiveness of restoration strategies, the enabling policy environments for payments of ecosystem services need to be improved and will be studied in detail. The project will therefore address the socio-ecological systems that drive forest change and the spatial distribution of ecosystem services (ES) in the landscape. The enabling policy environments will be assessed to develop proper incentives for forest restoration and provision of ES.
UFSCar/Lago do Sino & Utrecht University
coming soon