Identifying changes in the drivers of ecosystem services: Socioeconomic changes underlie reduced provision of pollination service.

The impact of land use changes on ecosystem services (ES) or Nature's Contributions to People (NCP) is relatively well-known, but the influence of socioeconomic changes on ES remains less clear, especially at larger spatial scales. Multiple socioeconomic factors influence the demand for a service (i.e.

Integrating public engagement to intensify pollination services through ecological restoration.

Globally, human activities impose threats to nature and the provision of ecosystem services, such as pollination. In this context, ecological restoration provides opportunities to create managed landscapes that maximize biodiversity conservation and sustainable agriculture, e.g.

Ephemeral forest regeneration limits carbon sequestration potential in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest.

Although deforestation remains widespread in the tropics, many places are now experiencing significant forest recovery (i.e., forest transition), offering an optimistic outlook for natural ecosystem recovery and carbon sequestration.

Areas Requiring Restoration Efforts are a Complementary Opportunity to Support the Demand for Pollination Services in Brazil.

Crop pollination is one of Nature's Contributions to People (NCP) that reconciles biodiversity conservation and agricultural production. NCP benefits vary across space, including among distinct political-administrative levels within nations. Moreover, initiatives to restore ecosystems may enhance NCP provision, such as crop pollination delivered by native pollinators.

Native forest cover safeguards stream water quality under a changing climate.

Ensuring a sufficient and adequate supply of water for humans and ecosystems is a pressing environmental challenge. The expansion of agricultural and urban lands has jeopardized watershed ecosystem services and a changing climate poses additional risks for regional water supply. We used stream water quality data collected between 2000 and 2014, coupled with detailed precipitation and land cover information, to investigate the effects of landscape composition and short-term precipitation variability on the quality of water resources in the state of São Paulo, Brazil.

Hidden destruction of older forests threatens Brazil's Atlantic Forest and challenges restoration programs.

Understanding the dynamics of native forest loss and gain is critical for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services, especially in regions experiencing intense forest transformations. We quantified native forest cover dynamics on an annual basis from 1990 to 2017 in Brazil's Atlantic Forest. Despite the relative stability of native forest cover during this period (~28 Mha), the ongoing loss of older native forests, mostly on flatter terrains, have been hidden by the increasing gain of younger native forest cover, mostly on marginal lands for mechanized agriculture.

The suggestion that landscapes should contain 40% of forest cover lacks evidence and is problematic.

A recent review suggests that forest cover needs to be restored or maintained on at least 40% of land area. In the absence of empirical evidence to support this threshold, we discuss how this suggestion is unhelpful and potentially dangerous. We advocate for regionally defined thresholds to inform conservation and restoration.

Moving to healthier landscapes: Forest restoration decreases the abundance of Hantavirus reservoir rodents in tropical forests.

Hantavirus Cardiopulmonary Syndrome (HCPS) is a disease with high human lethality rates, whose transmission risk is directly related to the abundance of reservoir rodents. In the Brazilian Atlantic forest, the main reservoirs species, Oligoryzomys nigripes and Necromys lasiurus, are thought to increase in abundance with deforestation. Therefore, forest restoration may contribute to decrease HCPS transmission risk, a topic still unexplored, especially in tropical regions.

Landscape, Environmental and Social Predictors of Hantavirus Risk in São Paulo, Brazil.

Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS) is a disease caused by Hantavirus, which are negative-sense RNA viruses in the family Bunyaviridae that are highly virulent to humans. Numerous factors modify risk of Hantavirus transmission and consequent HPS risk. Human-driven landscape change can foster transmission risk by increasing numbers of habitat generalist rodent species that serve as the principal reservoir host.

Safeguarding Ecosystem Services: A Methodological Framework to Buffer the Joint Effect of Habitat Configuration and Climate Change.

Ecosystem services provided by mobile agents are increasingly threatened by the loss and modification of natural habitats and by climate change, risking the maintenance of biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and human welfare. Research oriented towards a better understanding of the joint effects of land use and climate change over the provision of specific ecosystem services is therefore essential to safeguard such services. Here we propose a methodological framework, which integrates species distribution forecasts and graph theory to identify key conservation areas, which if protected or restored could improve habitat connectivity and safeguard ecosystem services.

Conservation economics. Response to Comment on "Using ecological thresholds to evaluate the costs and benefits of set-asides in a biodiversity hotspot".

Finney claims that we did not include transaction costs while assessing the economic costs of a set-aside program in Brazil and that accounting for them could potentially render large payments for environmental services (PES) projects unfeasible. We agree with the need for a better understanding of transaction costs but provide evidence that they do not alter the feasibility of the set-aside scheme we proposed.

Using ecological thresholds to evaluate the costs and benefits of set-asides in a biodiversity hotspot.

Ecological set-asides are a promising strategy for conserving biodiversity in human-modified landscapes; however, landowner participation is often precluded by financial constraints. We assessed the ecological benefits and economic costs of paying landowners to set aside private land for restoration. Benefits were calculated from data on nearly 25,000 captures of Brazilian Atlantic Forest vertebrates, and economic costs were estimated for several restoration scenarios and values of payment for ecosystem services.

Agribusiness opportunity costs and environmental legal protection: investigating trade-off on hotspot preservation in the state of São Paulo, Brazil.

Prior to deforestation, São Paulo State had 79,000 km(2) covered by Cerrado (Brazilian savanna) physiognomies, but today less than 8.5% of this biodiversity hotspot remains, mostly in private lands. The global demand for agricultural goods has imposed strong pressure on natural areas, and the economic decisions of agribusiness managers are crucial to the fate of Cerrado domain remaining areas (CDRA) in Brazil.