Conflicts and opportunities for commercial tree plantation expansion and biodiversity restoration across Brazil

Substantial global restoration commitments are occurring alongside a rapid expansion in land-hungry tropical commodities, including to supply increasing demand for wood products. Future commercial tree plantations may deliver high timber yields, shrinking the footprint of production forestry, but there is an as-yet unquantified risk that plantations may expand into priority restoration areas, with marked environmental costs. Focusing on Brazil—a country of exceptional restoration importance and one of the largest tropical timber producers—we use random forest models and information on the economic, social, and spatial drivers of historic commercial tree plantation expansion to estimate and map the probability of future monoculture tree plantation expansion between 2020 and 2030.

Yield increases mediated by pollination and carbon payments can offset restoration costs in coffee landscapes

Ecological restoration is vital for reversing biodiversity loss and climate change but faces cost-related implementation challenges, hampering global restoration efforts. Identifying when restoration within agricultural landscapes provides financial benefits—either by increasing crop yields or providing carbon credits—is imperative. Here, we developed restoration scenarios and estimated their financial outcomes to understand conditions where coffee yield and carbon-credit-derived restoration benefits compensate restoration costs in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest hotspot. We found that costs can be balanced by yield increases when farms already have >10% forest cover and restoration targets are below 25% forest cover.

Quantify wild areas that optimize agricultural yields

We contend that the sustainable management of agricultural landscapes depends on quantifying the impact of their areas of natural habitat on biodiversity and food production. This quantification at the landscape scale will account for the yield lost by taking land out of production.

Evidence of time-lag in the provision of ecosystem services by tropical regenerating forests to coffee yields

Abstract Restoration of native tropical forests is crucial for protecting biodiversity and ecosystem functions, such as carbon stock capacity. However, little is known about the contribution of early stages of forest regeneration to crop productivity through the enhancement of ecosystem services, such as crop pollination and pest control. Using data from 610 municipalities along the Brazilian Atlantic Forest (30 m spatial resolution), we evaluated if young regenerating forests (YRFs) (less than 20 years old) are positively associated with coffee yield and whether such a relationship depends on the amount of preserved forest in the surroundings of the coffee fields.