Open-land-derived agroforestry and effects of abandonment of management of the main crop on ecosystem services and woody plant diversity

Abstract

Societal Impact Statement: Tropical forests are rapidly declining. One promising strategy to reverse the loss of tropical forest is the establishment of agroforestry on open land. We combined interviews with biodiversity surveys to learn general lessons from success and nonsuccess stories of the establishment of open-land-derived coffee agroforests in one of the world's biodiversity hotspots, the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Our findings highlight the need for continued agronomic support to smallholder farmers to avoid abandonment, maintain, and even expand open-land-derived agroforestry. Interestingly, as abandoned agroforests were not converted back to open land, both managed and abandoned agroforests provided ecosystem services and contributed to the restoration of native tree cover across the landscape. Summary: Tropical forests are biodiversity hotspots threatened by deforestation and fragmentation. One strategy to restore tropical forest is to establish agroforestry on open land. However, we lack insights into the social and ecological dynamics of open-land-derived agroforests, and specifically the reasons for and consequences of abandonment. We aimed to understand the reasons leading to the abandonment of management of the main crop and the impact on ecosystem services, disservices and the woody plant community structure. We combined semiquantitative interviews with biodiversity surveys to examine the reasons for abandonment and the consequences for ecosystem services, disservices and the woody plant community in the Atlantic Forest region of Pontal do Paranapanema (SE Brazil) where coffee agroforests were established during the past two decades. Reasons for abandonment were primarily agronomic (failure of crop establishment and decline in productivity), whereas only a few farmers reported socioeconomic reasons. Interestingly, ecosystem services, disservices and woody plant community structure had not (yet) differentiated after the abandonment of management. Our findings underscore that more and continued agronomic governmental and non-governmental support to smallholder farmers is essential to maintain and expand open-land-derived agroforestry. Notably, as abandoned agroforests were not converted back to open land, partly due to legal restrictions, they continued to provide ecosystem services and contributed to the restoration of native tree cover across the landscape.