The Wildlife Corridors Programme

Towering above restoration

The relationship between forests, water and climate is complicated. To understand how forest restoration impacts water and climate processes, WeForest is participating in a new flux tower experiment, led by ESALQ from the University of Sao Paulo, and the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD). The tower is being built in the middle of a 30-hectare experimental restoration forest in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, located in the Sao Paulo state.                                                 

Flux towers measure the exchange of water, energy, and carbon (CO2) between forests and the atmosphere, allowing scientists to make predictions of how forests will respond to a changing climate and how a land-use change like deforestation will impact global climate change.                                                                                         

Linking tree diversity to ecosystem functioning

The experiment will analyze the relationship between tree diversity and ecosystem functioning. The effects of tree species composition, drought and soil fertility on water and carbon cycles will be studied over the course of several years. Measuring water and carbon fluxes over the entire ‘life history’ of a growing forest - from the bare ground before planting to a mature forest - will help to understand the role of tree species diversity on ecosystem water and carbon cycles. This aids us to discover which species of trees and which combinations of species could maximize the benefits for water and carbon sequestration and how each species will respond to increasingly frequent drought events due to climate change.                                

Understanding the ecological effects of our restoration work              

The resulting data will help us understand carbon and water cycles in WeForest’s restoration sites and other restored areas of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. It will allow improvement of our restoration and management techniques which will maximize the benefits for water and climate.

Links:

• August 2019 progress report Brazil

With our camera traps in the Atlantic Forest in Brazil we know for sure that different kinds of endangered animals are returning to the area.

For example the ´Potoo´ (Nyctibius griseus). This nocturnal bird feeds on insects during the night. During the day she looks like a tree trunk to avoid being seen, and it is therefore that the local names for the Potoo can be translated as ´the mother of the moon´ and ´ghost bird´.

The Potoo prefers to feed and rest on younger and more open forests where it can move around more easily, and can therefore be seen a lot in our tree plantings and naturally-regenerating forests.

Another animal that has recently been spotted by our camera traps in the "Santa Monica Reserve", surrounding the Morro do Diabo State Park, is the Black Jaguar (Panthera onca. Black jaguars belong to the same species as the "regular" jaguar. It is estimated that around 20% of the jaguars are black jaguars.

The jaguar is listed as near threatened by the IUCN and has become locally extinct and critically endangered in some areas and habitat loss and fragmentation are to blame. However, seeing them in the camera traps means that small sub-populations are surviving, giving us all the reason to remain optimistic and to continue, with your support, restoring forests in the Atlantic forest in Brazil and help more species return to their natural habitat.