Potential areas for multifunctional forestry systems

Abstract

Multifunctional landscapes as a conservation paradigm are a way of addressing the multiple use of land as a factor of both resilience and sustainability. In such context, spreading multifunctional forestry systems is an important strategy because, in addition to providing resources to rural producers, they contribute to the provision of ecosystem services related to gene flow, regulation of the water cycle, and carbon sequestration. This paper suggests a method to characterize and estimate potential areas for multifunctional forest systems within sugarcane producing municipalities in Sao Paulo State, Brazil, based on a case study. These areas, defined in the paper which of low agricultural farming, include the Legal Reserve liability, Restricted Use areas and slopes with sugarcane and pastures. Through the identification of areas, the land classification of properties and considering three forest typologies (Heterogeneous Forests, Agroforests and Integrated Crop-Livestock-Forest) a flowchart a flowchart was elaborated for decision-making regarding the choice of the most adequate forest typologies for each situation. The proposed method identified, for the analyzed municipality, 14,430 ha potential for the implementation of forest systems based on the exploitation of timber and non-timber products of native tree species and propose the most adequate forest systems.