LERF/ESALQ/USP activities of environment restoration and recovery

Abstract

By reason of legal and environmental constraints, actual restoration of degraded areas has been concentrated mainly in the riparian environment. In spite of protection of the riparian forests by law for almost half century, great part of these forests were degraded as occurred with other natural  formations. In the last decades as government inspection grew along with legal punishments, resulted on an increase of conservation and  restoration of these riparian formations. The perception that it was necessary to improve and round out the available scientific knowledge about the restoration of those areas, stimulated the growth of research in different knowledge areas on riparian forests. Today there are already a lot of scientific knowledge available on several aspects of the physical environment features of the riparian forests, like geomorphology, soils and hydrology, and also about the biological communities, including aspects like plant species composition, phytossociological structure, phenology and dynamics of these vegetations. Also the fauna have been studied. This article presents a succinct methodology used by the Laboratory of Ecology and Forest Restoration (LERF) from University of São Paulo in the restoration of degraded areas.