Sustainability Indicators in Practice

8 Restoration Success Of Tropical Forests: The Search For Indicators

Jerônimo Boelsums Barreto Sansevero and Mário Luís Garbin

8.1 Introduction

Human activities are viewed as a main cause for the planet’s current environmental crisis (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment – MA, 2005; Ellis et al., 2010). Deforestation, forest fragmentation, agricultural activities, pollution and expansion of urban areas have changed about two thirds of earth’s ecosystems (MA, 2005) and, as a consequence, have led to biodiversity loss, species’ extinctions and reduction of the resilience capacity of many ecosystems (Peterson et al., 1998; Silva and Tabarelli, 2000; Laliberté et al., 2010). Indirectly, such transformations affect the provision of many ecosystem services ...