Protocol for monitoring tropical forest restoration: Perspectives from the atlantic forest restoration pact in Brazil

Monitoring protocols are needed to evaluate the millions of hectares of land that are being proposed for forest restoration in the coming decades. Standardized proposals are critical to evaluate efficacy of restoration strategies, identify triggers for corrective actions, compare results across projects, and generally learn from past projects to inform future restoration efforts. We describe an iterative process, including over 200 stakeholders, to develop a protocol for monitoring Brazilian Atlantic Forest restoration. We give an overview of the ecological, socioeconomic, and management criteria, indicators, and metrics included in the protocol. Strengths of the protocol include the following: (a) testing and use across sites with a range of ages, forest types, past land uses, restoration techniques, and implementing institutions; (b) participation by a broad range of government, nongovernment, private, and academic institutions in the protocol development process; and (c) inclusion of socioeconomic and management criteria. Next steps for facilitating the broad adoption of the protocol in the Atlantic Forest region include providing in person and online training courses, establishing an online repository for storing and comparing monitoring data, and developing smartphone applications to facilitate data collection. Although the protocol was developed for the Atlantic Forest context and further refinements are needed, we think that the Atlantic Forest Pact monitoring protocol may serve as a model to inform the development of similar protocols in other regions, which ultimately could be integrated to produce a pantropical protocol for common use by several restoration forest programs worldwide

Life Cycle Assessment in automotive sector: A case study for engine valves towards cleaner production

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a well-established tool to analyze environmental aspects and impacts of products and processes. However, there are few studies available regarding LCA of automotive components such as the small parts used by vehicle engines, e.g., intake and exhaust valves. This paper showed a cradle-to-grave LCA of exhaust valves produced in Brazil for automotive use. Based on environmental hotspots of the case study, cleaner production scenarios were developed to reduce environmental burdens and to improve manufacturing eco-efficiency. Thirteen midpoint impact categories were evaluated and more than 90% of all the impacts were due to fuel consumption into the internal combustion engine during the valves use phase. Regarding the valves manufacturing phase, the machining processes applied on the valve stem represented 63% of all the impacts, and they were strongly influenced by the consumption of electric energy, raw materials used in the valve stem and cutting fluid. For this reason, cleaner production scenarios were evaluated and tested in a centerless grinding process of the valve stem. The best cleaner production scenario showed a potential impact reduction up to 72% in the stand-by grinding mode followed by up to 44% less impacts in the dressing mode. Simple changes on grinding parameters produced a huge potential of minimizing environmental burdens in a life cycle perspective, especially in terms of impacts for resources (fossil and minerals) depletion (RD). A comparison between the environmental profiles before and after adopting the proposed cleaner production measures showed a significant reduction of 27% on the RD impacts. Therefore, improvements of the exhaust valve's manufacturing parameters can generate a better environmental life cycle performance towards cleaner production

There is hope for achieving ambitious Atlantic Forest restoration commitments

Achieving ambitious global restoration commitments is a huge challenge. The Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact, created in 2009 as a movement to restore 15 Mha of degraded/deforested lands by 2050, pledged 1 Mha towards the 2020 Bonn Challenge. We documented the restoration of an estimated 673,510\u2013740,555 ha of native forests from 2011 to 2015 in the Atlantic Forest, and expect that a total of 1.35\u20131.48 Mha will be under recovery by 2020. The Pact is one of the first Brazilian restoration initiatives to monitor an international restoration commitment and to demonstrate that ambitious targets can be reached. Part of this success in large-scale restoration is related to three main Pact activities: (i) development of restoration governance, communication and articulation; (ii) promotion of strategies to influence public policies; and (iii) establishment of restoration monitoring systems. The experience and lessons learned by the Pact could inspire and inform other restoration initiatives worldwide