Resource Database

Restoring functional diversity in tropical grasslands

Grasslands cover a substantial area in the tropics and contribute to the provisioning of key ecosystem services. Restoration of biodiverse tropical grasslands is complex, and the current success of these projects is low. The reasons why biodiverse grassland restorations fail remains unknown, although it is likely that plant species being targeted lack suitable functional properties to survive and compete in the degraded environments that are being restored. The species composition of surrounding undisturbed grasslands is being used to guide current restorations, however these species may not be successful on degraded land, which tends to have compressed drier soils and altered nutrient composition. Neotropical Grasslands are slow to mature and successful restoration relies on future-proofing suitable ecosystem function against future changes in climate, which is determined by functional trait composition. The latest research from rainforests suggests a focus on plant resource-use strategies, and particularly, hydraulic functional traits are key to determining ecosystem-scale stability and climate resilience in drought-prone areas. In this talk, I will present how we are applying these research techniques (developed by our team in rainforests) to test the importance of functional trait composition to the success of grassland restoration and the provisioning of key ecosystem services in grasslands in central Brazil.

Global multicriteria and multibiome priority maps for restoration and their associated vast contributions to biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation

If achieved, global restoration targets would constitute the largest anthropogenic land-use change to be realised over one human generation and can potentially provide major contributions to societal goals of mitigating dangerous climate change and halting species extinctions. Evidence suggests that restoration benefits are highly variable in space, but these studies focus on local to national or regional scales and often to single goals or ecosystem types. Here we present the first global spatial prioritisation maps for restoration and assess their associated impacts, illuminating trade-offs and synergies across benefits for biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation, as well as for reducing land-use opportunity costs. We developed a tailored spatial optimisation algorithm, identified 2.9 billion hectares of lands available for restoration, their associated climate change mitigation potential, and impacts of ecological restoration on extinction risks for over 20,000 vertebrate species and agricultural opportunity costs. Restoration would deliver a vast and cost-effective potential contribution of restoration to these global challenges, but these benefits and their costs have a very high spatial heterogeneity. Trade-offs are pronounced, with the best solution for climate change achieving only 61% of the potential benefits for biodiversity. Nevertheless, our analysis shows optimal compromise solutions, and found one which achieves 94% and 91% of the maximum benefits for biodiversity and climate change, respectively. Our maps can inform the implementation of existing regional, national, and global targets, as well as providing input for upcoming global negotiations on post-2020 conservation targets.

The impact of the removal of invasive alien plants on water resources system yield: Helping Cape Town to avoid day zero

The City of Cape Town has recently experienced a severe drought that nearly resulted in a city of over 4 million people running out of water. In response to this crisis, the City of Cape Town has fast tracked a number of potential water supply augmentation options. One of the priority actions is to improve catchment management through the removal of invasive alien plants from the catchments of the major water supply dams. South Africa has embraced this aspect of catchment management primarily through the ‘Working for Water’ program, as it had been shown that the continued invasion of the catchment areas will have a significant impact on water resources availability and yield. In this study we review previous estimates of the potential benefits from the removal of invasive alien plants on the catchment areas of South Africa and show how a failure to adequately maintain catchment areas free of invasive alien plants may have contributed to the severity of the drought which affected Cape Town between 2015 and 2018. The study further examines what the likely benefits are for increased investments in the removal of invasive alien plants as currently supported by the Greater Cape Town Water Fund and how this may provide benefits under climate change.

The incentives for peatland restoration: From pilots to international conventions

Peatland restoration when successful is beneficial for wide range of stakeholders. At the same time ecosystem restoration projects demand serious investments. Anyhow, there is problem to merge those who benefits with those who invest in the projects. The solution is in finding proper incentives related to specific stakeholder groups. Restoring peatlands is enhancing ecosystem services on local and global levels. Local beneficiaries as a rule cannot pay. The global beneficiaries such as Multilateral Environment Agreements (MEAs) can pay but demand clear accounting mechanisms to demonstrate benefit before the investment. This presentation covers case studies which demonstrate the benefits on the local, regional and global levels. The methods are demonstrated for how to upscale peatland restoration pilot outcomes and generate incentives for regional, national, and global players and investors. The approach for accounting for the input of peatland restoration to climate change mitigation and adaptation is suggested for pilots in Mongolia and Russia. The pilots are considered as demonstration projects for the integration of ecosystem-based solutions to the National Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement.

Evaluating the ability of bivalve facilitation to enhance seagrass bed resilience to disturbance

Human-induced degradation of seagrasses has accelerated across the globe. Restoring these productive habitats has proven to be both challenging and costly, particularly once a bed has been entirely lost.  Therefore, it is critical to develop and test alternative approaches that promote existing bed resilience to disturbance. One such approach is the incorporation of positive species interactions into restoration design. We hypothesize that facilitation from a mutualist bivalve (the hard-shell clam) could aid in seagrass bed restoration by assisting in a rapid return to favorable environmental conditions for seagrasses after a disturbance. We tested the ability of bivalve facilitation to increase mixed community seagrass bed resilience in North Carolina, USA to two separate disturbance regimes: physical perturbation from propeller scars and excess water column nutrients. We monitored the effect of clam addition and disturbance on seagrass bed characteristics including growth rate, shoot density, epiphyte load, and more. There was no statistically significant effect among treatments for the first summer of the experiment, however we hypothesize for subsequent growing seasons that clam presence will enhance seagrass recolonization into propeller scars and reduce epiphytic loads under nutrient-loading scenarios. These findings would suggest that harnessing ecological facilitation can be an effective restoration technique for degraded seagrass beds. Understanding how mutualistic plant-animal interactions may reduce seagrass recovery time will allow managers to modify restoration designs to take advantage of natural ecological relationships across a variety of geographic locations and environmental conditions.

There is hope for achieving ambitious commitments of Atlantic Forest restoration

Achieving ambitious global restoration commitments is a huge challenge. The Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact, created in 2009 as a movement to restore 15 Mha of degraded/deforested lands by 2050, pledged 1 Mha towards the 2020 Bonn Challenge. The Pact defined and accounted as “Forest Landscape Restoration” only native vegetation recovery as the aim of the movement is to promote biodiversity conservation, nature’s contribution to people, a native species forest-based economy, and contribute to the implementation of public policies demanding ecological restoration. We documented the restoration of estimated 673,510-740,555 ha of degraded/deforested lands from 2011 to 2015 in the Atlantic Forest and expect that a total of 1.35-1.48 Mha of native forests will be under recovery by 2020. This is one of the first Brazilian restoration initiatives to monitor its international restoration commitment and provide evidence that established ambitious targets can be reached. Part of this success in large-scale restoration is related to three main Pact initiatives: i) governance, communication, and articulation; ii) monitoring system; and iii) vision and strategies to influence public policies. The experience and lessons learned by the Pact could be used: i) to guide, systematically, official governments and organizations monitoring reports about progress towards national and global commitments, ii) to inspire other restoration initiatives and commitments, iii) as a roadmap on how to create enabling conditions for large scale restoration to contribute to achieving global restoration commitments, and iv) to present a “bottom-up” smart governance mechanism that includes people in the restoration supply chain.

Ecological restoration on large scale commercial Solar Development: Opportunities for habitat restoration and agriculture

Renewable energy sources, including large scale commercial solar development, are quickly becoming integrated into electrical energy networks world-wide. Many of these solar projects are sites on degraded lands, sanitary landfills, former quarry and mine sites, or other degraded habitats that offer opportunities for ecological restoration and restoration as agricultural sites. This paper describes opportunities and the methods we and others have used to provide ecological restoration and improved stormwater management on large scale commercial solar renewable energy projects. We also provide examples of how solar energy and agriculture may be integrated to provide dual uses of energy and food production. When feasible, it is preferable to site new solar projects on previously developed or degraded locations. Within these previously developed sites, both internal and external restoration of grasslands and ecosystem habitat may be incorporated into the solar restoration plan to improve ecological conditions. For instance, a solar project was built on a former airport. The paved runways were removed, and planted with native grasses, thereby creating new habitat. Solar projects may be seeded with a combination of native grasses and wildflowers to control erosion, promote pollinators, and to provide habitat for wildlife. The inter-cropping of agricultural crops may be compatible with solar projects, as is the ability to graze livestock or maintain bee colonies. Examples of agricultural intercropping with solar projects is provided using examples from the United States and other parts of the world. Worldwide examples are provided of ecological restoration of degraded habitats at commercial solar sites.

A dry shrubland restoration within an irrigated farm landscape matrix in New Zealand

Within a 7,000 ha plantation forest to pivot-irrigated dairy farm conversion in lowland Canterbury, New Zealand, 187 ha of land has been developed for ecological restoration; 27 new reserves have been integrated into the landscape matrix, with linkages through ecological corridors. The few local remnant benchmark communities consist of Kunzea serotina (Myrtaceae, kānuka, tea tree) with an understory of smaller shrubs and an almost continuous ground cover of Hypnum moss. Our studies have drawn attention to the important functional role of the moss layer, both in moisture conservation and for seedling establishment. Nutrient spillover from farmland favours adventive weeds, but tolerance of native plants to drought stress provides some advantages once they become established.  Management of noxious weeds (gorse and broom) and animal pests (rabbits and hares) is particularly critical. Our restoration strategy has been to establish research plots within the reserves, each of which has an established perimeter planting of Kunzea as protective buffer zones. This paper describes the results of experimental trials of soil acidification, mulch amendments, the efficacy of tree guards, how to restore the moss layer, the role of nitrogen fixers, and faunal colonization.  Natural colonization by some native plants provides some surprising findings, but the range of species is restricted by a lack of propagule sources at distances that allow native birds to disperse seeds. Current attempts to introduce inoculants and to embed small biodiversity pods within the restoration plots are discussed.  We show how the economics of upscaling requires different approaches to ecological restoration.

Investing in Ecological Infrastructure at the Catchment Level

The land ethic, restoration, and me

Ethicists and conservation biologists have long debated the role of humans in nature.  One extreme holds humans as outside the natural realm while the other extreme considers humans one with nature. In this talk, I argue for the latter, simply because I see no juncture during evolutionary history when humans made a jump from being part of their ecosystems to being an outsider that merely uses ecosystem services (though the dawn of agriculture is a possibility). Restorationists especially must grapple with the question of if and/or how to take humans into account when locating and designing ecological restorations. Aldo Leopold’s essay, “The Land Ethic”, provides direction through its emphasis on the interdependence of biotic (including human) and abiotic actors, but leaves unanswered the larger question of landscape: where is ecological restoration appropriate? Some argue that it is a waste of resources to restore parcels that are too small to be self-sustaining, but this excludes human participation and ignores the societal role in sustainability.  Also sacrificed in this view is the reciprocal value of restored areas to humans. City planners have long understood the value of trees and parks in urban landscapes and such refuges from agricultural pesticides may also prove valuable for imperiled insects, such as the US endangered Rusty Patched Bumblebee. Increasing the opportunity for interactions between humans and other aspects of nature, including making humans active participants in restoration within their communities, can produce feedbacks that heighten appreciation for our shared environment.

Assessing large-scale restoration interventions in Africa’s Great Green Wall programme

Africa’s Great Green Wall (GGW) is a transformative initiative to combat desertification, land degradation, and the effects of climate change in drylands around the Sahara. Large-scale restoration interventions are the priority actions that are implemented to increase biomass production, vegetation cover, and land productivity for small-scale farming and pastoral systems. We hypothesised that standardised assessment can be carried out within the first years of restoration interventions. Using innovative high-resolution satellite imagery and spatial assessment tools, we investigated participatory field operations over five years in 120 plots of 50 to 200 hectares under restoration involving 100 village communities in Burkina Faso and Niger. Comparative assessment results showed an 80% match between collected field data and computerised data just after mechanised ploughing, using Radar detection techniques of soil disturbance. After restoration planting, the vegetation index data (NDVI) showed a significant increased biomass in years 3 and 5 in all the plots. Plots planted 5 years ago, showed land cover improved 10% to 40% on average. Qualitative data of species enrichment also showed an increase in biodiversity, as a methodical combination of woody and herbaceous native species were planted. However, there was very little cumulative increase in NDVI values of natural regeneration in control plots for this Sahel region. The combination of field data with remote sensing data to provide a standardised, affordable and objective assessment of the biophysical impact of restoration interventions is now used by FAO to support the whole GGW restoration programme and is proposed for other large-scale restoration initiatives.

Increasing operational resilience for sagebrush ecosystems by integrating indicator species metrics at multiple spatial scales into decision support tools

Unprecedented conservation planning efforts for imperiled sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) ecosystems of western North America increasingly focus on enhancing operational resilience though tractable decision-support tools that link spatially explicit variation in soil and plant processes to outcomes of biotic and abiotic disturbances spanning large spatial extents. However, failure to consider higher trophic-level fauna in these tools can hinder efforts to operationalize resilience owing to spatiotemporal lags between slower reorganization of plant and soil processes following disturbance and faster behavioral and demographic responses of fauna to disturbance. Here, we provide multi-scale examples of decision-support tools for management and restoration actions that evaluate ecological resilience mapped to variation in soil moisture and temperature regimes through new lenses of habitat suitability and population performance responses for an at-risk obligate species to sagebrush ecosystems, the greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus). We then describe pathways for more explicit integration of sage-grouse fitness with factors influencing variation in sagebrush resilience to disturbance and resistance to invasive species (e.g., annual grasses). The intended product of these efforts is a more targeted operational definition of ecological resilience for managers with quantifiable metrics that limit spatiotemporal mismatches among restoration responses owing to differences in engineering resilience between sagebrush ecosystem processes and sage-grouse population dynamics. We primarily describe tools that address threats to sagebrush ecosystems in the Great Basin in the western portion of sage-grouse range (i.e., grass-fire cycles and conifer expansion), but underlying concepts have broader application to a range of ecosystems. Some preliminary information is provided for timely best science.

Restoration Guidelines for Shellfish Reefs

The Priority Site Determination: A Rapid & Quantitative Floristic Biomonitoring Protocol

Often, ecological restoration is conducted without any subsequent biomonitoring. The absence of monitoring prohibits the evaluation of restoration benchmarks, thus precluding any objective assessment of restoration protocols. The reasons cited for not monitoring restoration projects are many, including insufficient planning, funds, time and/or trained staff to conduct these field assessments. Further complicating the issue are decisions to carry out qualitative v. quantitative biomonitoring protocols. While it might seem qualitative approaches obviate most, if not all biomonitoring impediments relating to time, training and budgets; qualitative data often fail to answer even the most simplistic of research questions. Thus, quantitative data should be gathered where and whenever possible, for they provide a vastly more powerful means to test any variety of hypotheses.

The elements of planning, funding, time, training and quantification were identified as key criteria in the development of a unique and rapid vegetative biomonitoring tool for the evaluation of riparian restoration benchmarks. While the initial season of biomonitoring was both labor intensive and costly, these efforts bore the desired fruit: i.e., the Priority Site Determination (PSD). Exhaustive analyses of these data revealed that it was appropriate to monitor just 13, one-acre sites for the quantification of biodiversity, bio-invasion, ecologically relevant communities, and species of interest, for a riparian ecosystem stretching for hundreds of miles and across two western United States. In the end, the procurement of a highly quantitative set of data from a select group of study sites far outweighed the alternative of gathering qualitative data from a much larger pool of study sites. The PSD not only fulfilled contractual obligations to generate a biomonitoring protocol as promised, but it is a fluid system enabling investigators to apply this monitoring system in diverse contexts, and in a timely and efficient manner.

International Principles and Standards for Restoration. Second Edition. A Brief Introduction to Key Concepts and Tools

Priority Effects in Restoration: Benefits, Costs, Caveats, and Questions

What Do We Know & What Do We Still Need to Know to Use Priority Effects in Ecological Restoration?

Prioritization Tools: A Case for the Management Unit Control Plan tool

The Koup, the gold standard in community base natural resource management in Western Cape, South Africa

Undervalued and Overlooked: Naturally Regenerated Vegetation in Agroecological Landscapes

Rural Community Socio-ecological Benefits in the Upper Pongola Catchment

Stewardship: taking care of something, e.g. valuable objects

Ex-situ Plant Conservation in Eastern Madagascar: Creating a Resource for Future Forest Restoration Endeavours

Linking Fire and Ecosystem Restoration in Mediterranean climate-region shrublands and forest: a view from six continents

Dhesigen Naidoo Opening Plenary: Challenges in a Multi-Polar World

An information system for monitoring changes in South Africa’s freshwater biodiversity and ecosystem condition

South Africa’s unique freshwater biodiversity is under enormous pressure from human activities, climate change, and invasive species. River health is deteriorating faster than it can be measured, and the data that do exist suggest that human impacts have and continue to severely compromise biodiversity and aquatic ecosystem function. This can have serious adverse consequences for ecosystem services, such as the provision of food and safe, clean drinking water. Until now, there has been no informative and accessible database for hosting river biodiversity data in South Africa, impeding assessments of historic and current river conditions. Such information is critical for establishing baselines and measuring patterns of change in response to human-linked impacts and restoration efforts. The Freshwater Biodiversity Information System (FBIS) is a response to this knowledge gap, and through consultations with data users and contributors, and collaborations with key partners and stakeholders, aims to provide South Africa’s first platform for rapid and reliable assessments of change in freshwater biodiversity and ecosystem condition. The project seeks to mobilize and import to the system baseline biodiversity data, identify strategic long-term monitoring sites (including sites associated with key restoration projects), and train key organizations on how to use the information system. Through the use of map-based visualisations, user-friendly data dashboards and rapid data extraction capabilities, the system will improve knowledge of freshwater biodiversity and long-term river health, and thereby support better-informed river management decisions and ecological restoration projects.

Assessing, with limited resources, the contribution of wetland restoration to ecosystem services supply

Resources for evaluating the ecological outcomes of investments in ecological restoration are often limited. In order to rapidly assess the contribution of wetland restoration to the functionality of a wetland for supplying ecosystem services, a method has been developed based on the WET-EcoServices method. A set of indicators (e.g. hydraulic roughness of the vegetation) are rated on a five-point scale. Indicator scores are then combined in an algorithm that attempts to reflect the relative importance and interactions of the attributes represented by the indicators. In addition, the extent of the affected wetland area is recorded. Furthermore, supply is placed in the context of the demand for the ecosystem services, based on the number of beneficiaries and their level of dependency. Thus, the greater the increase in functionality over the wetland area for which there is a high demand for the ecosystem services, the greater will be the contribution of wetland rehabilitation in terms of ecosystem services. This provides a currency for comparing different wetland rehabilitation sites or scenarios within a site.  Application of the method is illustrated by comparing five different wetland restoration sites in South Africa’s Working for Wetlands program, encompassing a diversity of land use contexts. At some sites the contribution to supply was much greater both in terms of the spatial extent of the wetland and the level to which the functionality of the positively affected area had been raised. However, this was often not accompanied by a correspondingly greater demand for the services at the site.

The Presidio Time Machine

The Presidio Time Machine invites you to explore the park’s past and present using re-photography — a process that blends historic and contemporary images. Over 100 acres of Presidio wildlands have been restored during the past 25 years. From daylighted creeks, to grasslands and saltmarsh, explore the transformation!

First ex situ outplanting of the habitat- forming seaweed Cystoseira amentacea var. stricta from a restoration perspective

In the framework of the EU project ROCPOP-Life, the first ex situ outplanting experience on Cystoseira amentacea var. stricta has been implemented in the Cinque Terre MPA (northwestern Mediterranean). A total of 400 clay tiles were fixed to the rocky shore with screws: the tiles were monitored for the next two months by photographic sampling, and survival, cover and growth were assessed. After two months, over 40% of the tiles were covered with Cystoseira juveniles, which reached approximately 8 mm in total length. The high cover (> 25%), assuring moisture and shading, and the appropriate size of the juveniles, to avert micro-grazing, at time of deployment were key to the survival and growth of the outplanted juveniles.Our finding show that outplanting of midlittoral canopy-forming species is a feasible approach for restoration efforts, with particular attention given to the early phases: i) laboratory culture, ii) transport, and iii) juveniles densities.

REPORT ON THE SECOND GLOBAL FORUM ON ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION: The Role of Ecological Restoration in Achieving Global Biodiversity Targets – Broadening the Post-2020 Framework

Recognizing the increasing role of ecological restoration as a tool for addressing a wide variety of ecological and social challenges, the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) and the International
Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Commission on Ecosystem Management (CEM) Ecosystem Restoration Thematic Group (ERTG) hosted their second biennial Global Forum on Ecological Restoration in Cape Town, South Africa on September 23, 2019. Thirty-eight experts from sixteen countries came together to address The Role of Ecological Restoration in Achieving Global Biodiversity Targets: Broadening the Post-2020 Framework, especially in view of the upcoming United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.