Índices de referência para monitoramento da restauração de florestas estacionais semidecíduas

Abstract

One of the main objectives of environmental restoration is to rescue the self-sustainability of the fragile ecosystem and to determine whether the ecosystem is moving towards this objective, efficient environmental monitoring is necessary. The fact that it is necessary to rethink restoration at all times makes monitoring a crucial step in the process of ecological restoration, and consequently also makes the choice of ecological indicators. In addition to being essential to choose, it is important to determine the reference values for the evaluation of restored areas, and to ensure that the environment to be restored is really recovering its ecological functionality and sustainability. In this sense, the objective of this work was to propose reference indexes for the phytophysiognomy of the Semideciduous Seasonal Forest, for all of Brazil, as a proposal for a tool to aid in the process of environmental monitoring of areas in the process of environmental restoration, and to apply such formulated values in the evaluation of three areas of ecological restoration, respectively in the municipalities of Ivinhema, Jateí and Caarapó, MS. Eighteen ecological indicators were studied in 307 reference ecosystems of Semideciduous Seasonal Forest in 15 Brazilian states. Descriptive statistics (mean and confidence interval) were used for data analysis of numerical ecological indicators and for nominal indicators, they were evaluated by comparing the proportion of absent and present to create reference and comparison values. Reference and comparison values were defined for several ecological indicators. For the evaluation of the areas, indicators were used based on the MESMIS method – Framework for the Evaluation of Natural Resource Management Systems Incorporating Indicators, evaluating the ecological processes that generate stability (the system's ability to maintain the ecological balance), resilience (response to system disturbances) and reliability (system's ability to maintain its productivity in the face of long-term changes) based on proposed benchmarks. Of the three areas, Caarapó is the one that progresses closest to a restored area since it presents conditions close to the reference area, with Jatei following, standing out in the indicators richness (106 species) and diversity of tree species (3.99 ). The high capacity, both stability and resilience of the Caarapó and Jatei ecosystem, indicates a greater facility, compared to Ivinhema, for the system to maintain a stable dynamic equilibrium and the ability to return to a state of equilibrium or maintain its productive potential, even after disturbance. . The Ivinhema area, even after 13 years of implantation of the restoration, still did not present the necessary stability for the functionality of the system.