Modeling landscape dynamics in an Atlantic Rainforest region: Implications for conservation

The dynamics of the Atlantic Rainforest loss and recovery are still not fully understood despite its long history of human occupation. In this study, we investigated changes in an Atlantic Rainforest region due to major biophysical and human proximate causes. First, we modeled land-cover and land-use changes from 1962 to 2000, including deforestation and forest regrowth, and thereby simulated future landscape trajectories to assess their possible effects on the conservation of forest species of the Ibiúna Plateau, a region located in Southeastern Brazil within the Atlantic Rainforest biome. We modeled four scenarios (status quo, random, law enforcement, and land-use intensification) and simulated their resulting landscape trajectories for the year 2019 using DINAMICA. The landscape dynamics in the study region were particularly intense. During the first period of 1962-1981, the rate of forest regrowth (3% year⁻¹) was greater than the rate of deforestation (2% year⁻¹), whereas in the latter period of 1981-2000, increasing urbanization and the spreading of rural establishments resulted in more deforestation (2.9% year⁻¹) than regrowth (1% year⁻¹). These dynamics imprinted a heterogeneous landscape, leading to the predominance of progressively younger secondary forests with increasingly less capacity of hosting sensitive forest species. The influence of proximate causes on the dynamics of deforestation and forest regrowth showed consistent patterns, such as higher forest regrowth rates near rivers, on steep slopes and far from dirt roads, whereas losses in young secondary vegetation and forest were far from rivers, on gentle slopes and near urban areas. Of the modeled scenarios, only the law enforcement scenario may lead to the recovery of a network of interconnected forest patches, suggesting that simply the enforcement of current forest laws, which prohibit deforestation on unsuitable agricultural areas and along river margins and establish a minimum of 20% of forest remnant per rural property, may effectively favor forest species conservation in the short term (two decades) without the need of any forest restoration effort.