Perception of ecosystem services by family farmers in the municipality of Irituia/PA, Eastern Amazon: subsidies for forest restoration

Abstract

Due to the lack of studies about the sociocultural dimension of ecosystem services, we analyze in this work the perception of these benefits by family farmers who have agroforestry systems in the northeast of Pará, in the Amazon region.  With this objective, we categorize forest restoration strategies based on primary data collection - interviews, semi structured questionnaire, illustrated questionnaire and Likert Scale. Through the relative perception based on the application of Likert scales, we observed that the farmers recognize the benefits provided by agroforest systems and natural landscapes, with high perception of ecosystem services in all the categories present in the Millennium ecosystem evaluation. Furthermore, the higher perceptions of ecosystem services are related to the group of farmers with a smaller area of forest reserve and bigger area of agroforest systems. The result suggests that loss of forest area, at the individual level, probably drives to a higher sense of the benefits of natural systems and thus, the increment in agroforestry systems constitutes an attempt to return to functions and benefits lost through environmental degradation over time. In general, support programs are necessary to strengthen the capacity of agroforestry systems to provide ecosystem services and increase biodiversity conservation.