Assessment of the nursery species pool for restoring landscapes in southeastern Brazil

Abstract

Brazil has committed to fulfilling international restoration goals and to enforcing environmental legislation that will require private landowners to undertake ecological restoration of 21 million hectares of degraded and deforested landscapes. To support a broad range of restoration practices, a well‐established supply chain capable of representing regional plant diversity is essential. This study investigated the restoration species pool in native plant nurseries in São Paulo state, located in southeastern Brazil, and evaluated their geographic distribution, similarity of their plant stocks, and the proportion of species represented from regional floras. Despite a lack of technical assistance and a significant presence of nonnative species (126 species, average 7.5 species/nursery), we found an impressive native species richness in plant nurseries (561 species, average 86.4 species/nursery) from both the Atlantic Forest and Cerrado domains, representing 38–44% of regional floras. There was a huge bias toward tree and shrub species (96.6%) and an absence or underrepresentation of other growth forms, as well as of savanna specialists, animal‐dispersed, and threatened species. The dissimilarity of species observed among the different nurseries surveyed highlights their role in representing regional diversity, which reflects their regional seed collection practices. Effective assistance and training are essential to address issues related to misidentification of species, underrepresentation of most functional plant groups, and the presence of nonnative species, as well as to support the supply chain, which is currently undergoing a market downturn.

Mapping tree species for restoration potential resilient to climate change

“…Hence, in regions with species that are geographically more restricted, it requires more species to cover those entire areas. Hence, our results broaden the findings from local studies (Silva et al 2017; Vidal et al 2020), showing that forest restoration needs to consider a variety of species regionally, and offer a global information dataset to support future decisions.…”

“…As a case study, we selected 39 areas globally and investigated the suitability of species presently and under climate change. We demonstrate that covering the heterogeneous environmental conditions in a region requires a large tree species pool, supporting local assessments for tree nurseries (Vidal et al 2020). We further found variability in the region in terms of median species cover, which was correlated with the number of species to reach 95% cover of the region.…”

Challenges during the execution, results, and monitoring phases of ecological restoration: Learning from a country-wide assessment

“…Criteria for selecting planting material, however, are often poorly related to restoration objectives [ 21 ] or even overlooked by practitioners [ 25 ]. Tree species for assisted succession are selected for their availability in nurseries [ 26 ] or some desired traits (e.g., abundant foliage, good root development, resistance to pests) rather than for their role in a particular ecological process or ecosystem function [ 25 ]. Projects that establish plantings to increase primary productivity, pollination services, or seed dispersal are indeed scarce [ 27 – 29 ].…”

Non‐continuous reproductive phenology of animal‐dispersed species in young forest restoration plantings

“…More than 400 species can be found in the forest nurseries of the Atlantic Forest, but fast‐growing tree species are the most commonly planted in restoration projects, including some that are animal‐dispersed (de Almeida & Viani, 2020a, 2020b; Vidal et al., 2020). Given that animal‐dispersed trees play an important role in enhancing natural regeneration processes and that many are considered framework species for forest restoration (Viani et al., 2015), it is important to study their flowering and fruiting phenologies to select those that are most suitable for tropical forest restoration plantings (Garcia et al., 2014; Howe, 2016; Morellato et al., 2016; Rodrigues et al., 2009; Viani et al., 2015).…”

“…More than 400 species can be found in the forest nurseries of the Atlantic Forest, but fast-growing tree species are the most commonly planted in restoration projects, including some that are animal-dispersed (de Almeida & Viani, 2020a& Viani, , 2020bVidal et al, 2020).…”