Priority areas for forest restoration aiming at the maintenance of water resources in a basin in the Cerrado/Amazon ecotone, Brazil

Mato Grosso is one of the states with the greatest agricultural importance in Brazil and represents one of the main agricultural frontiers in the world. The expansion of these frontiers, along with deforestation, livestock farming and urbanization, leads to a new dynamics with significant environmental impacts on the availability of water resources. In this context, the objective of the study was to evaluate methods of multi-criteria analysis and map priority areas for forest restoration in the Upper Teles Pires basin – Mato Grosso, Brazil, in order to support decision makers and the maintenance of water resources, according to the quantity and quality of water. Multi-criteria Analysis (MCA), with integration of the criteria of proximity to forest, slope, erodibility and proximity to surface water, was used. The criteria maps were aggregated using the Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA), with varying risk and tradeoff, and Weighted Linear Combination (WLC) methods. From the MCA it was possible to successfully identify potential areas for forest restoration for the basin under study. The WLC, OWA2 and OWA6 methods showed a good solution for decision-making as they respectively set 16.38%, 22.73% and 12.79% of the total area of the basin as of very high priority. •The Multi-criteria Analysis has been used by many authors as a decision-making process in different areas of study.•This method is widely used and recognized for decision making on problems with various criteria.•It was possible identify potential areas for forest restoration.•The study provide viable solutions to maintain the quality and availability of water resources.