Samuel de Barros Silva

1 Introduction Predicting forest recovery in human-modified landscapes requires understanding how compositional, taxonomic and functional dimensions of biodiversity change along successional gradients (Ceballos et al. 2024; van der Sande et al. 2024). This multidimensional complexity remains poorly explored in subtropical montane forests, where post-disturbance recovery is shaped by climatic constraints that differ markedly from tropical systems (Jakovac et al. 2021; Souza 2021).

1 Introduction Passive restoration is widely promoted as a low-cost pathway for global forest recovery (Chazdon and Guariguata 2016; Crouzeilles et al. 2020), yet its effectiveness in degraded landscapes remains uncertain (Brancalion et al. 2016; Reid et al. 2018; Jakovac et al. 2021; Mata et al. 2025).