Nucleating techniques and green manuring in demonstration units of ecological restoration

Abstract

The objective this work was to test the regeneration capacity of one of the degraded headwaters of the São Lourenço river when subjected to different recovery nucleation techniques. The area was divided into four treatments with different techniques: muvuca (mixture) of seeds green manuring, no-till, mechanized planting, hauling and direct seeding of seeds to the soil. For each treatment, three plots of 81 m² were established, in which the richness, density and abundance of individuals were measured, as well as the vegetal cover in the soil and the development of the plants.  Approximately 55% of the planted species were established in the demonstration units of ecological restoration. The most abundant species was Cajanus cajan, with 345 individuals, and the most frequent was Canavalia ensiformis, with 92 observations. It was verified that the treatments differed in species richness (F (9,248,39) = 4.76, p <0.001) and abundance of individuals (F (9,248,39) = 4.58, p <0.001), and that these variables are strongly and positively associated with the soil cover indexes. It is concluded that the most successful technique was the seeding of multivalent seeds with distributor of limestone and fertilizers used in precision agriculture and that the soil cover index favors species richness and abundance of individuals, and that the use of different revegetation techniques simultaneously can generate satisfactory results for the recovery of a degraded ecosystem.