Ecological Engineering 170 (2021) 106322

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Ecological Engineering
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecoleng

Suggesting priority areas in the buffer zone of Serra do Brigadeiro State

Park for forest restoration compensatory to bauxite mining in
Southeast Brazil
Luiz Henrique Elias Cosimo a, *, Sebastião Venâncio Martins a, José Marinaldo Gleriani b
a
Laboratório de Restauração Florestal - LARF, Departamento de Engenharia Florestal, Universidade Federal de Viçosa, 36570-900 Viçosa, Minas Gerais, Brazil
b
Departamento de Engenharia Florestal, Universidade Federal de Viçosa, 36570-900 Viçosa, Minas Gerais, Brazil

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Prioritizing is essential to optimize resource allocation and restoration benefits. Bauxite mining is an important
Environmental compensation economic activity in the Zona da Mata region of Minas Gerais state, Southeast Brazil. The exploitation process of
Geographic information systems this ore creates demands for compensatory forest restoration, which may be directed to key areas for conser­
Multicriteria evaluation
vation such as the Buffer Zone of the Serra do Brigadeiro State Park (BZ-SBSP).
Sustainability
The objective of this study was to propose a new application of Multicriteria Evaluation based on Geographic
Information Systems (MCE-GIS) to suggest priority areas for compensatory forest restoration in BZ-SBSP by using
criteria important at the landscape level and in the field. The modeling of priority areas followed a suitability
scale approach, which varied from 0 to 255, using five factors: permanent preservation areas, slope, land use and
land cover, distance from conserved forest fragments and ecological corridors. The factors were aggregated under
three different risk scenarios: Weighted Linear Combination (WLC), low risk Ordered Weighted Average (OWA)
and high-risk OWA. Suitability increased with the risk assumed in the analysis. The area corresponding to the
very high priority class increased from 0.31% in the most conservative scenario to 10.72% in the riskiest sce­
nario. The high-risk OWA scenario can be considered the best alternative for presenting a greater number of
viable options and high suitability in at least some factors. The maps generated in this study may support
multiple stakeholders to identify and direct resources to high priority sites. It is important to highlight that a set
of economic, social, and technical factors may still restrict the restoration of an area indicated as high priority.
Thus, this study can be considered as general guidelines for restoration planning, suggesting areas that should
result in greater benefits derived from forest restoration and in greater success of the projects, when considering
the landscape of interest, its integrity and other relevant aspects that should be considered in a restoration
project.

1. Introduction
Bauxite mining in the Zona da Mata region of Minas Gerais state,
Southeastern Brazil, has been carried out since 2008. The environmental
actions triggered by this activity have since brought several gains to the
region, such as the increase in forest cover (Balestrin et al., 2020) and
the effective restoration of mined areas, whose monitoring has already
shown the presence of 146 native species from the Atlantic Forest,
contributing to the conservation of biological diversity (Martins et al.,
2020).
In this region, bauxite occurs in small and scattered areas across the
landscape and mining generally takes place in lands already converted
for human use, such as pastures and coffee plantations. After mining,
these areas undergo a rehabilitation process and become productive
once again, with higher productivity than before mining if good man­
agement practices are observed (Vilas Boas et al., 2018), highlighting
the environmental and social sustainability of this activity. However,
isolated native trees can eventually be found in some mined areas and
the suppression of these trees to remove the ore, as authorized by the
competent environmental agency, is conditioned to a compensatory
plantation of native species (COPAM, 2008). Thus, environmental
compensation due to the suppression of isolated trees in the Atlantic
Forest stands out as one of the greatest opportunities to promote land­
scape forest restoration in this biome.

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: luizhenriquecosimo@gmail.com (L.H.E. Cosimo).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoleng.2021.106322
Received 23 February 2021; Received in revised form 6 June 2021; Accepted 12 June 2021
Available online 30 June 2021
0925-8574/© 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
L.H.E. Cosimo et al.
The Buffer Zone of the Serra do Brigadeiro State Park (BZ-SBSP) can
be considered a key area for compensatory forest restoration plantations
because this protected area is extremely important for Atlantic Forest
conservation (Drummond et al., 2005; Feio et al., 2019) and is close to
the bauxite mining sites. However, BZ-SBSP consists of a large region.
Therefore, it is essential to assess priority areas in a landscape context so
the resources and efforts can be destined to sites with the potential to
return the maximum ecological benefits (Palik et al., 2000; Orsi et al.,
2011; Strassburg et al., 2019). In addition, forest landscape restoration
must focus not only on site-level restoration but must pursue restoration
of ecological processes on a larger scale (Mansourian and Vallauri, 2005;
Maginnis et al., 2012).
In this context, Multicriteria Evaluation based on Geographic Infor­
mation Systems (MCE-GIS) is a good tool for solving spatial problems
such as this (Malczewski, 2006; Huang et al., 2011). The use of MCE-GIS
consists in the selection of factors that are relevant to the studied
problem, the ranking of these factors according to their relative
importance and the aggregation of these factors in a GIS environment
(Valente and Vettorazzi, 2013). Afterwards, the user of this technique is
presented with a set of solutions that vary in suitability for the proposed
objective (Chakhar and Martel, 2003).
MCE has been consistently used for forest restoration planning, since
it can integrate a set of ecological, social and economic criteria, allowing
an objective and efficient decision. MCE applications in the literature
incorporate different perspectives in the MCE scheme depending on
Fig. 1. Geographical location of the Buffer Zone of the Serra do Brigadeiro State Park, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
2
Ecological Engineering 170 (2021) 106322
restoration objectives, such as minimizing nutrient export (Zhao et al.,
2013), restoring environmentally vulnerable areas (Rahman et al.,
2014), adopting stakeholders’ preferences (Uribe et al., 2014),
conserving water resources (Vettorazzi and Valente, 2016; Valente et al.,
2021), conserving biodiversity (Strassburg et al., 2019) and others.
The objective of this study was to propose a new application of
Multicriteria Evaluation based on Geographic Information Systems
(MCE-GIS) to suggest priority areas for compensatory forest restoration
in the Buffer Zone of the Serra do Brigadeiro State Park by using criteria
important at the landscape level and in the field.
2. Material and methods
2.1. Study area
The study was performed in the Buffer Zone of the Serra do Bri­
gadeiro State Park (BZ-SBSP) (Fig. 1). BZ-SBSP comprises part of 15
municipalities, with a total area of 143,365.69 ha (IEF, 2007b).
2.2. Multicriteria evaluation
Fig. 2 represents a general scheme of the multicriteria evaluation
applied in this study. Database, factors processing, and aggregation
processing are explained with details in the next sections.
L.H.E. Cosimo et al.
Fig. 2. General scheme of the multicriteria evaluation applied to suggest priority areas for compensatory forest restoration in BZ-SBSP.
2.2.1. Database
Multispectral images from MSI/Sentinel 2, with spatial resolution of
10 m, were obtained on the EarthExplorer platform of the United States
Geological Survey (USGS). Three images were necessary to cover the
entire study area to select the portions without cloud cover, using one
image from 12/08/2018 (reference file name
L1C_T23KQT_A016680_20180901T130245) and two images from09/01/
2018 (reference file names L1C_T23KQT_A016394_20180812T130727
and L1C_T23KQS_A016680_20180901T130245). The images from
September correspond to the same satellite passage, but available in
different files on the platform. The files were joined in a mosaic and the
area corresponding to BZ-SBSP was extracted.
A Digital Elevation Model (DEM) ALOS PALSAR, with spatial reso­
lution of 12.5 m, was obtained on the Earthdata platform of the United
States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The
DEM was resampled to a resolution of 10 m for a perfect overlap with
multispectral images and thus enable the simultaneous processing of
files derived from this database. Resampling of DEM cells was done
through bilinear interpolation, which is recommended for continuous
surfaces (such as altitude) and uses a weighted average of the four
nearest cells, so that the closer the center of an input cell is to the center
of an output cell, the greater its influence on the resampled value (Baboo
and Devi, 2010).
Municipalities limits, SBSP limit and the hydrographic network were
obtained in vector format on the Spatial Data Infrastructure from Minas
Gerais State System of Environment and Water Resources (IDE-Sisema).
Files were standardized for the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM)
projection, Zone 23S, Datum SIRGAS 2000.
2.2.2. Factors and restrictions
The modeling of priority areas followed a suitability scale approach,
which varied from 0 to 255, using five factors: Permanent Preservation
Areas (APPs), slope, land use and land cover (LULC), distance from
conserved forest fragments and ecological corridors. Categorical factors
were standardized by directly attributing values and continuous factors
were standardized with sigmoidal functions, according to the literature.
LULC classes that could not be identified due to shading or that make
forest restoration impossible in any way were considered restrictions.
APPs are areas protected by Brazilian Law No. 12.651 (Native
Vegetation Protection Law), with the environmental function of pre­
serving water resources, the landscape, geological stability and biodi­
versity, facilitating the gene flow of fauna and flora, protecting the soil
and ensuring the well-being of human populations (Brasil, 2012). For
3
Ecological Engineering 170 (2021) 106322
this reason, these features received maximum suitability (255) after
their delimitation. The APPs considered in this study were: a) water­
course margins, defined through a 30-m hydrographic buffer, b) hilltops,
delimited through the methodology developed by Oliveira and Fer­
nandes Filho (2016), c) areas with slope greater than 45◦ . APPs related
to the surrounding of water springs were not considered due to the
absence of a database indicating their location for the entire study
region.
The bands b2, b3, b4 and b8 of the Sentinel images were used for
automatic supervised classification of LULC. The Normalized Difference
Vegetation Index (NDVI) was calculated according to Eq. 1 (Rouse et al.,
1973) and the composition b4(R)NDVI(G)b3(B) was used to collect
training samples and generate spectral data for the classes: agriculture,
exposed soil, native forest, pasture, planted forest, shade (shaded areas
derived from elevations in the study region), urban and water. Rocky
outcrops were manually delimited subsequently, because the automatic
classification did not show good results in separating these features from
the others. Finally, a spatial filter was used to decrease classification
noise. Classification accuracy was assessed through the visual interpre­
tation of 80 random points per class in the original image (totaling 720
validation samples), which were compared with the classified image and
generated a contingency matrix to calculate Overall Accuracy and the
Kappa Index (Congalton and Green, 2008). Finally, the LULC classes
received different levels of suitability or were listed as restrictions ac­
cording to Table 1.
b8 − b4
NDVI = (1)
b8 + b4
where: NDVI = Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, b8 = digital
number (DN) of band 8 (near infrared), b4 = digital number (DN) of
band 4 (red).
Native forest was extracted from LULC data and the selection of a
group of fragments with better conservation status was attempted based
on the landscape metrics: Total Area (AREA), Core Area (CORE),
Euclidian Nearest Neighbor Distance (ENN), Shape Index (SHAPE) and
Number of Core Areas (NCORE). These metrics were chosen for being
traditionally used to address spatial structure of landscapes, impacting
ecological processes and metapopulational dynamics (Kupfer, 2012;
Schindler et al., 2013).
It is important to mention that some forest areas found in BZ-SBSP
were not fragments, but vegetation continuous to the park that was
not protected by its limits and extended over the buffer zone. Therefore,
L.H.E. Cosimo et al. Ecological Engineering 170 (2021) 106322

Table 1 In the case of the monotonically increasing function, b = c = d.

Suitability values assigned to land use and land cover classes to suggest priority
areas for compensatory forest restoration in BZ-SBSP.
1 − (x − a) π
α= , when x > b, μ(x) = 1 (4)
b− a 2
Class Suitability Justification
The slope values for the study area were derived from the DEM.
Rocky outcrop, Null Do not allow the establishment of tree
urban and water (restrictions) species, making forest restoration
Assuming that flatter areas are more suitable for crop cultivation and
impossible other human activities, while high slope areas are less suitable for these
Exposed soil and Null Unknown land use and therefore not purposes and more prone to erosion, therefore more eligible for con­
shade (restrictions) considered in the analysis servation, slope was standardized with a monotonically decreasing
Native forest Null Areas already covered by native
sigmoidal function (Fig. 3-B). The control points were defined as a = 20◦
(restriction) vegetation, which are not suitable for
compensatory restoration and b = 45◦ . Thus, suitability was 0 for slope values up to 20◦ , increasing
Agriculture 50 Areas of primary interest of the population in the interval between 20 and 45◦ (lower and upper control points,
for food production, resulting in high respectively) and remained maximum after 45◦ .
conflict for restoration
The routes proposed for the passage of ecological corridors were
Planted forest 150 Intermediate conflict for restoration, as
does not involve food production
found with the least cost path analysis, which determines the path of
Pasture 255 Class more suitable for forest restoration, least resistance between a point of origin and destination. The resistance
since large areas are available, often (or cost) of each cell was represented by the factors: LULC, APPs, slope,
degraded, resulting in less conflict than the and fragment size (Table S1). The reference values were adapted from
others
Louzada et al. (2012) and Santos et al. (2018).
A cost file for each factor was created, and then they were aggregated
before proceeding with the following analyzes, this vegetation was through the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) according to Santos et al.
joined to the park limits to represent this large continuous forest (2018) (Table S2). In this process, the factors were submitted to pairwise
(hereinafter referred to as SBSP + adjacent vegetation). This process was comparisons by analyzing their relative importance on a scale of 1 to 9.
important, because misleading results would have been found in case The consistency ratio was 0.04, with a ratio below 0.1 being recom­
BZ-SBSP was studied independently. For metrics calculation, the soft­ mended to certify the consistency of the assigned weights (Saaty, 1980).
ware Fragstats 4.2 was used, and a 60-m edge was considered as the This aggregation generated a total cost matrix, representing the resis­
average distance where changes occur in the plant community in the tance of each cell to the passage of the corridor, from which the features
forests of the region (Lemos, 2008). Only fragments with at least 10 ha of of interest were connected. SBSP + adjacent vegetation was used as
total area were analyzed to avoid high computational costs in view of origin and conserved forest fragments were used as destinations of the
the abundance of small fragments. corridor. This approach was selected to form an ecological network
SBSP + adjacent vegetation was merged to the conserved fragments through a series of branches that start in the park and spread out,
selected and the Euclidean distance from each cell in the study area to preferably through APPs, pasture, high slope areas and the largest
this set of features was calculated. Suitability was standardized through fragments in the region.
a monotonically decreasing sigmoidal function (Fig. 3-A) (Eastman, CONAMA Resolution No. 09 of 1996 determines a minimum width
2015). The control points were defined as c = 0 and d = maximum equivalent to 10% of the length of corridors between remnants, with a
distance obtained in the analysis. Thus, the suitability went from 255 in minimum value of 100 m (CONAMA, 1996). Thus, the paths found
the smallest distance value of the selected group of fragments (lower received a buffer equivalent to 10% of their length and, finally, received
control point) and reached 0 in the largest distance value (upper control maximum suitability (255) to be aggregated with the other factors. The
point). landscape aspect was introduced in this analysis as part of the MCE
As reported by Gemitzi et al. (2006), these types of functions are scheme aiming at landscape connectivity and restoration success.
expressed by Eqs. 2, 3 and 4 below, with suitability originally calculated
on the 0–1 scale. However, the 0–255 scale was used in this study 2.2.3. Factors aggregation
because it provides the maximum possible differentiation when After a file for each factor had been prepared and all of them stan­
analyzing byte data. dardized on the same scale in the steps previously described, they were
ranked using the AHP technique, trying to reconcile their ecological
μ(x) = cos2 α (2) importance and how they affect forest restoration viability in the region
(Table 2). The consistency ratio of this hierarchy was 0.05.
where, in the case of the monotonically decreasing function, a = b = c Then, factors were aggregated under three different scenarios:
and. Weighted Linear Combination (WLC), low-risk Ordered Weighted
x− c π Average (OWA) and high-risk OWA with (Eastman, 2015).
α= , when x < c, μ(x) = 1 (3)
d− c 2 The WLC method multiplies each factor previously standardized by
the weight obtained through the ranking process and then sums the

Fig. 3. Sigmoidal functions A) monotonically decreasing used to standardize the factor distance from conserved forest fragments and B) monotonically increasing
used to standardize the factor slope.

4
L.H.E. Cosimo et al.
Table 2
Pairwise comparison of the relative importance of factors and statistical weights
to suggest priority areas for compensatory forest restoration in BZ-SBSP.
Factors Slope LULC EcCor DistFrag APPs Weight
Slope 1 1/3 1/5 1/7 1/9 0.0333
LULC 3 1 1/3 1/5 1/7 0.0634
EcCor 5 3 1 1/3 1/5 0.1290
DistFrag 7 5 3 1 1/3 0.2615
APPs 9 7 5 3 1 0.5128
LULC = land use and land cover, EcCor = ecological corridors, DistFrag = dis­
tance from conserved forest fragments, APPs = permanent preservation areas.
values (Eastman, 2015). With OWA, a second set of weights is used,
called order weights, which controls the way the factors are aggregated
and allows different solutions to be obtained within a strategic decision
space, varying risk, and tradeoff (Fig. 4). These weights are applied in a
cell-by-cell operation. First, for a giver cell, factors are ordered with
increasing suitability. Then, the factor with the lowest suitability re­
ceives the first order weight, the factor with the suitability just above
receives the second order weight, and so on until the factor with highest
suitability for that cell receives the last order weight (Eastman, 2015) .
Thus, depending on the set of weights adopted, factors with less or
greater suitability in each cell can be favored, generating a more con­
servative or riskier positioning (Jiang and Eastman, 2000). Although
order weights are generally not used in WLC, it is equivalent to a
particular OWA scenario where the same order weights are assigned to
all factors. Therefore, it is a scenario centered in the decision strategy
space, which is nor adverse to risk or inclined to risk.
Adapted from Jiang and Eastman (2000).
The horizontal axis represents the degree of ANDness associated with
the analysis. The closer this parameter is to 1, the more adverse to risk
the result is, reassembling a Boolean analysis with the AND operator,
which considers suitable only areas that meet all criteria (Eastman,
2015). Thus, areas with high suitability in the final map are expected to
have high suitability in all factors and the risk associated with decision-
making is extremely low, adopting a conservative position.
In contrast, an ANDness value close to 0 reassembles a Boolean
analysis with the OR operator, where the areas with high suitability in
the final map are expected to have high suitability in at least one factor,
as the factors with higher suitability are favored by order weights
(Eastman, 2015). Thus, the number of suitable areas tends to be greater
when compared to the other scenario, reflecting into a more flexible
approach, but the risk associated with decision-making also increases.
These three scenarios were considered to provide different possibil­
ities for decision makers, land managers and other social actors to whom
this analysis may be of interest. The order weights for each analysis are
described in Table S3. Finally, the files were classified based on equi­
distant intervals of suitability into five priority classes for compensatory
Fig. 4. Decision strategy space for the Ordered Weighted Average.
5
Ecological Engineering 170 (2021) 106322
forest restoration (Table S4). The database was prepared using the
ArcMap 10.3.1 and the factors’ aggregation was performed using the
TerrSet 18.3.
3. Results
3.1. Factors for multicriteria evaluation
The factors used for the multicriteria evaluation are shown in Fig. 5,
while the factors before standardization can be observed in Fig. S1. APPs
represented 19,768.41 ha (13.68%) in the BZ-SBSP (94.45 ha were
hilltops, 788.95 ha were areas with slopes ≥45◦ and 18,912.41 ha were
watercourse margins, with partial overlaps between them).
The classification and standardization of slope meant that 64.99% of
the BZ-SBSP received suitability 0 in this factor, representing areas of
greatest interest for human use (0–20◦ ) (Fig. 5). On the other hand, the
remaining area received increasing values of suitability following
greater slope, where suitability for human use decreases and the pro­
pensity to erosion increases, making these areas good targets for con­
servation. Regarding the conserved fragments, a wide strip around them
received high suitability, followed by continuously thinner strips with
less suitability (Fig. S1). The behavior of this factor reflects the use of the
sigmoidal function with the defined control points.
LULC results are presented in Table 3. Validation showed Global
Accuracy of 0.8972 and a Kappa Index of 0.8403, which means an
excellent agreement between the classified image and the validation
samples (Landis and Koch, 1977). As the results were satisfactory, the
temporal generalization that occurred when simultaneously using
training samples of images captured by the sensor at different times did
not interfere negatively in the classification (Pax-Lenney et al., 2001).
Forest fragments in BZ-SBSP with total area ≥ 10 ha showed different
behaviors in relation to landscape metrics (Fig. 6). Some fragments had a
large total area, but a small core area and were more isolated from the
others. Others had a shape index closer to 1.00 and a few disjunct core
areas but had small total and core area. Due to the impossibility of
finding fragments that represented desired behaviors in all the metrics
evaluated, only those with ≥20 ha of core area was selected, avoiding
small or, although with a large area, border dominated fragments. In
total, 18 fragments were selected to calculate the Euclidean distance
from conserved forest fragments and for the modeling of ecological
corridors (Fig. 5).
During the delimitation of ecological corridors, the least cost paths
connecting SBSP + vegetation adjacent to each of the 18 selected frag­
ments were found from the total cost matrix constructed with factors
representing the resistance to implement corridors (see Fig. S2 for more
details). Some paths partially overlapped due to the proximity of the
destination fragments. The lengths varied from 1460.60 to 8309.98 m
and, after applying the buffer corresponding to 10% of path length,
ecological corridors corresponded to a total area of 5565.31 ha (3.85%
of the study area).
3.2. Priority areas for compensatory forest restoration
The result of factors’ aggregation in the three risk scenarios is pre­
sented in Fig. 7. Suitability increased with the risk assumed in the
analysis. This behavior is expected, since the high-risk scenario tends to
favor factors of high suitability in each cell (Jiang and Eastman, 2000).
The histogram inserted in the figure expresses the number of cells
over the 0–255 gradient. It is possible to observe the occurrence of four
peaks in cell numbers for each scenario. The first two peaks correspond
to cells close to conserved fragments, which received maximum suit­
ability in this factor because of the function used for standardization,
with the first peak composed of agricultural areas and the second, with
greater number of cells, pasture areas. The third and fourth peaks (with a
smaller number of cells and greater suitability) correspond to APPs close
to conserved fragments and APPs both close to conserved fragments and
L.H.E. Cosimo et al. Ecological Engineering 170 (2021) 106322

Fig. 5. Factors for the multicriteria evaluation to suggest priority areas for compensatory forest restoration in BZ-SBSP, after standardization on the 0–255 scale.

geotechnologies to identify sites with high and very high priority and
Table 3
directing resources to these locations, where ecological benefits of forest
Land use and land cover in BZ-SBSP.
restoration can be increased based on the criteria adopted.
Class Area (ha) % As a general behavior, the predominant priority class migrated to the
Agriculture 28,204.73 19.51 immediately higher priority class when risk was increased (Table 4).
Bare soil 837.22 0.58 While very low priority predominated in the low-risk OWA scenario, low
Native forest 32,033.73 22.16
priority predominated in the WLC scenario and medium priority in the
Pasture 76,897.90 53.20
Planted forest 2556.43 1.77
high-risk OWA scenario. The area corresponding to the very high pri­
Rocky outcrops 2380.32 1.65 ority class increased from 0.31% in the most conservative scenario to
Shadow 361.17 0.25 10.72% in the riskier scenario.
Urban 1246.65 0.86
Water 31.20 0.02
Total 144,549.35 100.00 4. Discussion

APPs of watercourse margin have great ecological importance, such

within ecological corridors, respectively. The effect of the slope factor
was masked due to its low weight.
The classification of suitability into five priority classes is shown in
Fig. 8. In the same way suitability increased with the risk assumed in the
analysis, so did the area corresponding to high priority classes. These
maps can assist in land management and decision-making, using
as conservation of the diversity of plant and animal species (Martins
et al., 2015; Siqueira et al., 2016), increase of landscape connectivity
(Gillies and Clair, 2008; Martins et al., 2015) and control of sediment
deposition in river channels (Sparovek et al., 2002), justifying the
greater weight attributed in the analysis. High slope areas should also be
protected, as runoff tends to be much more intense in these areas

6
L.H.E. Cosimo et al.
Fig. 6. Landscape metrics for forest fragments with total area ≥ 10 ha in BZ-SBSP.
AREA = total area (ha), CORE = core area (ha), ENN = Euclidean distance from the nearest neighbor (m), SHAPE = shape index, NCORE = number of disjoint
core areas.
(Didoné et al., 2017). This is even more worrying when considering the
level of degradation of pastures in the region, where vegetation cover is
generally low, contributing to soil loss (Galdino et al., 2016). The high
density of APPs is explained by the local relief, which provides an
abundance of water courses, resulting in an extensive drainage network
(IEF, 2007a).
The results of the LULC classification revealed that the BZ-SBSP is
already a much altered region, since only 22.16% of the area corre­
sponds to native forest. The matrix of the study area is formed by pasture
(53.16%) and agriculture also occupies an important area in this region
(19.51%), concentrated mainly in the northern and eastern portions.
This behavior can be explained by the intense conversion of forest to
agriculture and pasture in the past, which is a scenario common to
several regions of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest (Ribeiro et al., 2009).
Currently, SBSP represents one of the few fragments preserved in the
Zona da Mata region of Minas Gerais state (Drummond et al., 2005; Feio
et al., 2019). This reaffirms the importance of the sustainable manage­
ment of its surroundings, in a way that forest restoration has a deep
effect in conservation.
The factor related to the distance of conserved forest fragments,
selected through landscape metrics, assumes that they are more
important for biodiversity conservation, as they can harbor more species
and larger populations of these species (Vieira et al., 2009; Cabrera-
Guzmán and Reynoso, 2012; Smith et al., 2018). Fragments with larger
core area, i.e., without influence of the edge effect, are capable of
harboring species sensitive to changes in the forest edges (Sekgororoane
and Dilworth, 1995; Dauber and Wolters, 2004; Hentz et al., 2018).
Thus, it is possible that a larger area conserved close to these fragments
may reduce the edge effects caused by anthropic pressure. In addition,
forest restoration close to these fragments could increase the function­
ally connected area for species that can cross the matrix, resulting in
greater permeability and a greater source of resources for these species,
which could use these restoration areas as steppingstones (Baum et al.,
2004; Boscolo et al., 2008; Barbosa et al., 2017). Moreover, the prox­
imity of fragments in good conditions is also important for the arrival of
propagules and natural enrichment, contributing to the long-term sus­
tainability of the restored ecosystem (Aide et al., 2000; Rodrigues et al.,
7
Ecological Engineering 170 (2021) 106322
2004; Martins, 2018).
The ecological corridors connecting the selected fragments and the
park consists of an ecological network between areas important for
conservation (Liang et al., 2018), assuming that size is a factor related to
the diversity and abundance of native species sheltered by a forest
fragment. This study is a pioneer in considering an ecological network of
corridors connecting a conservation unit to conserved fragments in the
surroundings within a multicriteria evaluation. The core area threshold
adopted was found by a careful assessment, weighting the amount of BZ-
SBSP occupied by corridors and the operationalization of the tool used.
A threshold much lower than the one used in this study would make the
use of LCP unfeasible, because great processing costs would come from a
massive selection of fragments, in addition to occupying a large area
with corridors, which would cause a loss in the sense of prioritization.
Conservation strategies must consider ways to minimize the negative
effects of habitat fragmentation (Haddad et al., 2015). These effects
include restrictions on the number of available resources and the
reproductive isolation of species (Seoane et al., 2010). It is expected that
the restoration of areas within the corridors delimited in the BZ-SBSP
will work as a tool to increase the functionally connected area for spe­
cies, allowing a greater area of foraging and facilitating the interaction
between the communities of the different fragments (Haddad et al.,
2000; Uezu et al., 2005; Bennett and Mulongoy, 2006). In addition to
forest restoration in the corridors, other measures such adopting less
intensive land uses (such as agroforestry systems) and implanting and
proper managing planted forests can be complementary measures to
rescue the landscape connectivity, as they may increase matrix perme­
ability (Baum et al., 2004; Uezu et al., 2008; Fonseca et al., 2009).
Choosing one of the three decision support scenarios presented in
this study have some practical implications. The more conservative
scenario (low-risk OWA) can be considered ideal for several purposes, as
it seeks to ensure that all criteria are met (Jiang and Eastman, 2000).
However, the number of alternatives with high suitability is limited,
with less than 5% of the area in the two upper classes of priority. This
approach has a positive outcome in multicriteria evaluations that wish
to obtain a single area for the allocation of enterprises, for example
(Rikalovic et al., 2014; Bohnenberger et al., 2018). This scenario is also
L.H.E. Cosimo et al. Ecological Engineering 170 (2021) 106322

Fig. 7. Suitability for compensatory forest restoration in BZ-SBSP in three risk scenarios.
A = low-risk OWA (ANDness = 0.63); B = WLC (ANDness = 0.50); C = OWA high-risk (ANDness = 0.38).

interesting when the decision involves human health or safety and risks
are not acceptable, such as allocation of landfills or areas for urban
expansion to avoid sites susceptible to landslides (Gorsevski et al., 2012;
Lorentz et al., 2016). However, forest restoration does not fit in these
types of perspectives and the high-risk scenario could be indicated for
involving a greater number of areas suitable for the final objective. This
point of view is further supported when considering the social and
economic limitations related to the execution of restoration projects in
these lands, which are often not mappable, leading to the need to deal
with case-by-case studies. Thus, it is positive to obtain many viable
alternatives.
The maps generated in this study may support multiple stakeholders
to identify the locations of the high and extremely high priority classes
and direct resources to these areas. It is important to highlight that a set
of economic, social, and technical aspects may still restrict the restora­
tion of an area indicated as high priority and should be addressed case by
case. Thus, this study can be considered as general guidelines for
restoration planning, suggesting areas that should result in greater
benefits derived from forest restoration and in greater success of the
projects, when considering the landscape of interest, its integrity and

8
L.H.E. Cosimo et al. Ecological Engineering 170 (2021) 106322

Fig. 8. Priority classes for compensatory forest restoration in BZ-SBSP in three risk scenarios.
A = low-risk OWA (ANDness = 0.63); B = WLC (ANDness = 0.50); C = OWA high-risk (ANDness = 0.38).

other relevant aspects that should be considered in a restoration project.

Table 4
Bauxite mining activity already has a significant positive environ­
Area (ha) and percentage (%) of BZ-SBSP by priority class for compensatory
mental impact in the Zona da Mata region of Minas Gerais State, Brazil.
forest restoration in three risk scenarios.
The restoration program already in course, including both environ­
Class Low-risk OWA WLC High-risk OWA mental compensation and the restoration of mined areas, is promoting
ha % ha % ha % the increase of forest cover is the region and contributing to the return of
Very low 89,593.13 83.22 14,913.75 13.85 3506.12 3.26 many native tree and shrub species (Balestrin et al., 2020; Martins et al.,
Low 4924.97 4.57 76,008.11 70.60 17,973.72 16.70 2020). This study is a new contribution to the sustainability of bauxite
Medium 7995.49 7.43 2539.72 2.36 66,523.95 61.79 mining, now focusing on the possibility of directing compensatory forest
High 4812.35 4.47 7175.84 6.67 8116.47 7.54
restoration to the Buffer Zone of the Serra do Brigadeiro State Park.
Very high 333.12 0.31 7021.64 6.52 11,538.8 10.72

9
L.H.E. Cosimo et al.
5. Conclusions
MCE-GIS is a direct, low-cost and efficient approach that facilitates
decision making. In view of the external forces that may limit restoration
projects, the high-risk OWA scenario can be indicated for providing a
greater number of alternatives with high suitability. In this scenario, a
site with low suitability in one factor can be offset by high suitability in
another. This is positive when considering aspects that may restrict
forest restoration in the Buffer Zone of the Serra do Brigadeiro State
Park.
This new application of MCE-GIS uses criteria at the landscape level,
such as use of landscape metrics to select conserved fragment and the
use of ecological corridors as a factor for MCE-GIS, but also important in
the field, such as prioritizing permanent preservation areas, high slope
and land uses with low conflict, which together should result in higher
ecological benefits and greater project success.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico
e Tecnológico (CNPq) for granting research scholarships and the Com­
panhia Brasileira de Alumínio (CBA) for supporting the project.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.ecoleng.2021.106322.
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