Prioritizing Forest Landscape Restoration Areas by Integrating Farmers' and Experts' Preference Factors in a GIS-Based Multicriteria Decision Analysis

Abstract

Abstract The success of Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) in the tropics hinges on factors like local community needs, ecological conditions, and conservation goals. In the Amazon basin, resource scarcity and lack of special credit lines hinder FLR implementation, pushing initiatives to build robust spatial planning in order to obtain the most cost efficient strategies. Establishing a validated set of criteria is crucial for determining priority areas, requiring stakeholder’s inputs. This study employed Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) to integrate spatially explicit factors with stakeholders' preferences. The focus was on identifying priority FLR areas in the Northeastern mesoregion (NE) of Pará state, Brazil, populated by small household farmers. Twenty farmers and 23 experts ranked 21 socioecological factors segregated in two clusters (economic/infrastructure and biophysical/land use restrictions), derived from a regression model study that evaluated secondary vegetation dynamics. Key infrastructural factors ('distance to roads,' 'distance to markets,' and 'distance to urban centers') were mostly consistent for both groups. Variations emerged in biophysical/restriction factors, with 'conservation unit of sustainable use' prioritized by farmers but not deemed relevant by experts. Synergies and disparities also surfaced for factors like 'deficit of legal reserve' and ‘high agricultural suitability’. Stakeholders' ranking scores were employed as weights to create prioritization maps. Experts identified 51.5% of NE Pará area as nonpriority and 5.4% as high priority, while farmers indicated 48.3% and 5.2%, respectively. Combining both groups' perceptions yielded consensus maps designating 9.1% of NE Pará as high priority. Bragantina microregion stood out in consensus maps, concentrating 32.7% of high priority areas. This approach provides a cost-effective method for stakeholder’s engagement. Policy recommendations emphasize focusing on western Bragantina and southwestern Salgado microregions to promote large-scale FLR effectively.