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Designing landscapes that can meet human needs, while maintaining functioning ecosystems, is essential for long-term sustainability. To achieve this goal, we must better understand the trade-offs and thresholds in the provision of ecosystem services and economic returns. To this end, we integrate spatially explicit economic and biophysical models to jointly optimize agricultural profit (sugarcane production and cattle ranching), biodiversity (bird and mammal species), and freshwater quality (nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment retention) in the Brazilian Cerrado. We generate efficiency frontiers to evaluate the economic and environmental trade-offs and map efficient combinations of agricultural land and natural habitat under varying service importance. To assess the potential impact of the Brazilian Forest Code (FC), a federal policy that aims to promote biodiversity and ecosystem services on private lands, we compare the frontiers with optimizations that mimic the habitat requirements in the region. We find significant opportunities to improve both economic and environmental outcomes relative to the current landscape. Substantial trade-offs between biodiversity and water quality exist when land use planning targets a single service, but these trade-offs can be minimized through multi-objective planning. We also detect non-linear profit-ecosystem services relationships that result in land use thresholds that coincide with the FC requirements. Further, we demonstrate that landscape-level planning can greatly improve the performance of the FC relative to traditional farm-level planning. These findings suggest that through joint planning for economic and environmental goals at a landscape-scale, Brazil's agricultural sector can expand production and meet regulatory requirements, while maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem service provision.

Since pristine Atlantic Forest remnants are vanishing, and biological reserves are in short, conservation of biodiversity will largely depend on proper management of the anthropogenic matrix. Here, we test (1) the effectiveness of ecologically-managed tree monocultures in maintaining Araucaria Forest biodiversity, (2) how this effectiveness change among taxa, and (3) we discuss management principles that can be used by the forestry industry in order to contribute positively to biodiversity conservation. The study was conducted in the Sao Francisco de Paula National Forest, southern Brazil, an environmental mosaic composed mostly of patches of Araucaria Forest and ecologically-managed monocultures of Araucaria, Pinus and Eucalyptus. Using standardized sampling methods in these four main habitats, we have recorded the richness and species composition of small mammals, birds, leaf-litter frogs, butterflies, galling insects, spiders, opiliones, flatworms, woody plants, epiphytic angiosperms, epiphytic ferns, lichens, and fruit-body producing fungi. Overall, we recorded 506 species in Araucaria Forest, 181 (36%) of which were exclusive of this habitat while 325 (64%) could be found in at least one monoculture. Distribution patterns of species richness and number of records across taxonomic groups showed that a large biodiversity can be found inside ecologically-managed plantations of Araucaria, Pinus, and Eucalyptus. For all studied taxa, except for epiphytic angiosperms and fruit-body producing fungi, more than half of the Araucaria Forest species could be found living on monocultures. We discuss how the actual management practices of the forest industry can be improved to contribute positively to the conservation of the Atlantic Forest biodiversity.

Knowledge of the habitat requirements of threatened species at both local and landscape scales is crucial for maintaining viable populations and for making conservation and management decisions. Here, we use live trapping and radio-tracking to investigate habitat use by four species of threatened marsupials – burrowing bettongs ( Bettongia lesueur ), brush-tailed bettongs ( B. penicillata ), greater bilbies ( Macrotis lagotis ), and bridled nailtail wallabies ( Onychogalea fraenata ). The study populations had been re-introduced to Scotia Sanctuary in western New South Wales, Australia, within a predator-proof area. All showed preferences for particular macrohabitats while resting by day, with M . lagotis and B . penicillata selecting Eucalyptus woodland with Triodia understorey and B . lesueur and O . fraenata selecting Eucalyptus woodland with shrubs. However, they showed no such partiality at night. Bettongia penicillata used areas with Triodia and litter but few herbs for shelter, while burrows of M. lagotis avoided shrubs. Habitat components that influenced trap captures were: crust cover and herb layer cover (negative) for B . penicillata , trees B . lesueur, crust cover for M . lagotis , and crust cover and trees O. fraenata (both negative). There was also a negative association at this scale between B. penicillata and both B. lesueur and M. lagotis , suggesting the possibility of competition. Our results support the idea that studies at multiple spatial scales are crucial to understand the habitat use and requirements of threatened fauna, and should therefore be incorporated into future re-introduction programs.