Abstract Turning national restoration commitments into action involves systematic spatial planning and prioritization of areas for investment. To achieve restoration at the landscape level, efforts must focus on ecological recovery, where productivity and ecosystem services are recovered on degraded agricultural lands, to meet not only environmental objectives but socioeconomic objectives as well, which can be accomplished through the establishment of sustainable land-use systems (SLUS). As financial resources for restoration are limited, identifying areas where resources can be used efficiently to achieve particular restoration objectives is critical. This study presents a rapid approach to identifying and prioritizing degraded agricultural lands for low-cost ecological recovery. Using publicly available remote sensing datasets at the national level, we apply the proposed methodology to Colombia, where we identify opportunities for cost-effective interventions on productive lands with moderate to light degradation, based on biophysical indicators of soil degradation. In tandem, we identify areas experiencing underutilization, where SLUS can be used to sustainably intensify production, and overutilization, where SLUS can be used to mitigate soil degradation. We identify and map over 10.3 million ha of land with potential for ecological recovery. We find that the Caribbean region proportionally has a high prevalence of moderately degraded agricultural and agroforestry soils, while the Andean region has a high proportion of moderately degraded production forestry soils. Our results aid in the identification and prioritization of areas where multifunctional SLUS, such as agroforestry, agroecology or climate-smart agriculture, can be developed to restore productivity and ecosystem services to degraded agricultural lands.

中文翻译：

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为生态恢复确定退化农业用地优先次序的快速方法：哥伦比亚案例研究

摘要 将国家恢复承诺付诸行动涉及系统的空间规划和投资区域的优先排序。为了在景观层面实现恢复，努力必须侧重于生态恢复，在退化的农业土地上恢复生产力和生态系统服务，不仅要满足环境目标，还要满足社会经济目标，这可以通过建立可持续的土地——使用系统 (SLUS)。由于用于恢复的财政资源有限，确定可以有效利用资源以实现特定恢复目标的区域至关重要。这项研究提出了一种快速方法来识别和优先考虑退化的农业用地，以实现低成本的生态恢复。我们使用国家一级公开可用的遥感数据集，将所提议的方法应用于哥伦比亚，在那里我们根据土壤退化的生物物理指标，确定对中度至轻度退化的生产性土地进行具有成本效益的干预措施的机会。同时，我们确定了未充分利用的区域，其中 SLUS 可用于可持续地集约化生产，以及过度利用，其中 SLUS 可用于减轻土壤退化。我们确定并绘制了超过 1030 万公顷的具有生态恢复潜力的土地。我们发现加勒比地区的中度退化农业和农林业土壤比例较高，而安第斯地区中度退化的生产林业土壤比例较高。