A pressing question that arises during the planning of an ecological restoration process is: where to restore first? Answering this question is a complex task; it requires a multidimensional approach to consider economic constrains and the preferences of stakeholders. Being the problem of spatial nature, it may be explored effectively through Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) performed in a Geographical Information System (GIS) environment. The proposed approach is based on the definition and weighting of multiple criteria for evaluating land suitability. An MCDA-based methodology was used to identify priority areas for Forest Landscape Restoration in the Upper Mixtec region, Oaxaca (Mexico), one of the most degraded areas of Latin America. Socioeconomic and environmental criteria were selected and evaluated. The opinions of four different stakeholder groups were considered: general public, academic, Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and governmental officers. The preferences of these groups were spatially modeled to identify their priorities. The final result was a map that identifies the most preferable sites for restoration, where resources and efforts should be concentrated. MCDA proved to be a very useful tool in collective planning, when alternative sites have to be identified and prioritized to guide the restoration work.

Newton, A. C., R. F. del Castillo, C. Echeverría, D. Geneletti, M. González-Espinosa, L. R. Malizia, A. C. Premoli, J. M. Rey Benayas, C. Smith-Ramírez, and G. Williams-Linera. 2012. Forest landscape restoration in the drylands of Latin America. Ecology and Society 17(1): 21. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-04572-170121

Seed dispersal is the first stage of colonization, and potentially affects recruitment. This process deserves more attention in tropical montane cloud forests (TMCF), since secondary succession is common owing to episodic disturbances. We studied annual seed rain in 10 nearby forest stands, ≈7 to ≈100 y following shifting agriculture, and one primary forest stand in southern Mexico to test the hypothesis that seed rain is limited at the scale of neighbouring fragments and that such limitation differs among species with different dispersal modes and successional origin. Annual seed rain was heterogeneous among forest fragments probably due to the prevalence of local seed dispersal, differences in stand age and the proportion of zoochory, and may help explain the patchy distribution of species observed in TMCF. Seed rain abundance and species diversity per unit trap area increased with the age of the stand. Biotically dispersed seeds increased towards older stands relative to abiotically dispersed seeds. Late-successional seeds were rarer in early successional stands than pioneer seeds in late-successional stands, suggesting that long-distance dispersal is generally more common for pioneer plants. Seed dispersal appears to constrain forest regeneration and to influence fragment species composition as a function of the distance from the source forests.

Pioneer species are essential for forest regeneration and ecosystem resilience. Pinus chiapensis is an endangered pioneer key species for tropical montane cloud forest regeneration in Mesoamerica. Human activities have severely reduced some P. chiapensis populations, which exhibited a small or null colonization potential suggesting the involvement of genetic factors associated with small populations. We explored the relationships between (i) population genetic diversity (allozymes) and population size, including sampling size effects, (ii) fitness estimates associated with colonization potential (seed viability and seedling performance) in a common environment and population size, and (iii) fitness estimates and observed heterozygosity in populations with sizes spanning five orders of magnitude. All the estimates of genetic diversity and fitness increased significantly with population size. Low fitness was detected in progenies of small populations of disturbed and undisturbed habitats. Progenies with the lowest observed heterozygosity displayed the lowest fitness estimates, which, in turn, increased with heterozygosity, but seed viability peaked at intermediate heterozygosity values suggesting inbreeding and outbreeding depression. Inbreeding depression appears to be the most immediate genetic factor in population decline. Conservation efforts should try to maintain large and genetically diverse populations, enhance gene flow by restoring connectivity between adjacent populations, and avoid genetically distant individuals.

The study of the ecology of fragmented landscapes has been dominated by two assumptions: the unique unidirectional path from larger to smaller fragments and the negligible role of fragment species on fragment properties. An accurate conceptualization of fragmented landscapes requires consideration of the age and origin of the fragments, i.e., direct fragmentation or reverse fragmentation (generation or increase of vegetated fragments by colonization), and the habitat modifications of fragment species (autogenic processes). Colonization and autogenic processes alter the fragments' composition and function. Fragment metrics affect colonization. Autogenic processes are antagonized by disturbances and modulated by abiotic inputs. Fragment alterations by autogenic processes may explain the continuous species substitution detected in some fragments or the species persistence in others. Reverse fragmentation, a natural process in commonly disturbed landscapes, challenges the avoidance‐of‐habitat disturbance as the ultimate strategy for biodiversity conservation and stresses the importance of pioneer species that promote succession as resilience elements in fragmented landscapes. Among‐fragment diversity, generated by local disturbances, can be essential for the resilience of fragmented landscapes, suggesting that conservation and habitat utilization can be complementary processes. Traditional agroforestry systems that depend on disturbance, fragmentation, colonization, and autogenic processes may provide important insights into fragmentation ecology.