The construction of hydropower plants often requires the flooding of large land areas,
causing considerable alterations in the natural environment. In the region surrounding the reservoir
of the Corumbá IV hydroelectric plant, located in the Cerrado region of Central Brazil, two types of
soil predominate, classified as Dystroferric Red Latosol and Dystroferric Haplic Cambisol. The plant
owners have to restore the degraded biome after the flooding of the margins caused by the filling
of the reservoir. An experiment was carried out with fifteen native species, selected for having
ideal phytosociological properties. Nine of them showed a survivability considered satisfactory in a
planting situation, with a view to large-scale planting. Assuming that the planting of native fruit
trees can be a quick solution to the attraction and preservation of wildlife, it would therefore provide
sustainable riparian revegetation around the reservoir. We adopted the SIMOS technique to rank
the criteria based on four morphological features and a Fuzzy AHP model to rank the contributions
of the nine fruit tree species to the sustainable restoration of part of the riparian vegetation cover
around the reservoir. In practical terms, we concluded that the soil types did not have any influence
on tree survival after two years of growth, but the native trees’ morphological features varied among
the species. These findings simplify the large-scale planting of seedlings that must be carried out by
the operator in the riparian forest around the reservoir.
