Property size and forest cover were key determinants of forest restoration in Southern Bahia in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil

Rayna Benzeev, Ashton Wiens, Daniel Piotto and Peter Newton

Land Use Policy, 2023, vol. 134, issue C

Abstract: Forest restoration has gained traction as a solution to mitigate climate change, contribute to biodiversity conservation, and support forest livelihoods. Yet there is limited evidence on the spatial locations where restoration is most likely to occur. In landscapes that primarily contain private properties, assessing the likelihood of restoration can be informed by understanding the enabling and limiting factors that have influenced property-level restoration in the past. In this paper, we tested the relationships between restoration, property size, and forest cover, for 8451 properties between 1985 and 2019 in Southern Bahia, Atlantic Forest, Brazil. We found that spatial property-level variables were strongly associated with restoration. First, we found that property size was positively correlated with the amount of restoration per property. Medium-sized properties (between 40 and 127 ha) accounted for the most restoration in aggregate. Second, we found that properties with less forest cover were associated with higher amounts of restoration. In addition, for properties larger than 20 ha, those with intermediate amounts of forest cover had high amounts of restoration. Third, we found that restoration was a spatial process that occurred in hotspots rather than randomly across the study landscape, indicating that restoration often occurred near to other restored properties. Understanding these relationships may assist restoration planners in making more informed estimates of the conditions that might enable future restoration. Given that restoration is a complex process that may require different approaches in different socio-environmental contexts, decision-makers may consider identifying and prioritizing properties of different sizes and with different amounts of forest cover depending on their specific priorities, landscape-level conditions, and restoration context. Our spatial analysis techniques assist in improving broader understanding of possible ways in which land use policy could prioritize for restoration at the property level and could later be applied to other socio-environmental tropical forest systems.

Keywords: Forest landscape restoration; Spatial prioritization; Property level; Landscape scale; Decision-making; Brazilian Atlantic Forest (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:134:y:2023:i:c:s0264837723003459

DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2023.106879

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