Resource Database

Decision support tools for forest landscape restoration: Current status and future outlook

Decision-making bodies at all scales face an urgent need to conserve remaining forests, and reestablish forest cover in deforested and degraded forest landscapes. Degradation is often viewed as ‘the problem’, and restoration as ‘the solution’. But, rather than being a goal, restoration is the means to achieve many goals. Despite the many advances in the development and application of decision support tools in FLR, this review reveals a gap in tools for the implementation of landscape-scale restoration initiatives and for guiding monitoring and adaptive management. The review also reveals that available tools primarily focus on assessing restoration opportunities at a broader scale, rather than within landscapes where implementation occurs. Evidence from research on community-based conservation and forest management suggests that tools for the empowerment, land rights and capacity building of local residents can help nurture strong coalitions of landscape restoration practitioners that apply adaptive management of restoration interventions, and evaluate potential restoration scenarios in their own landscapes.

Harnessing ecological processes to facilitate coral restoration

Incorporating ecological processes into restoration planning is increasingly recognized as a fundamental component of successful restoration strategies. We outline a scientific framework to advance the emerging field of coral restoration. We advocate for harnessing ecological processes that drive community dynamics on coral reefs in a way that facilitates the establishment and growth of restored corals.

Bombs Away: Militarization, Conservation and Ecological Restoration

Across the globe, hundreds of millions of acres of former military zones and bases are being converted to restoration areas, refuges, and conservation lands. David G. Havlick has traveled the world visiting these spaces of military-to-wildlife transition, and in Bombs Away he explores both the challenges—physical, historical, and cultural—and fascinating ecological possibilities of military site conversions.

The business of planting trees: A growing investment opportunity

In recent years, hundreds of companies have entered the restoration industry. They represent a wide range of business models that deliver financial returns for investors while restoring forests and agricultural lands. This report profiles 14 businesses that are part of an emerging restoration economy. It highlights four promising investment themes in land restoration: technology, consumer products, project management, and commercial forestry.

Large- scale restoration increases carbon stability under projected climate and wildfire regimes

Tree plantations displacing native forests: The nature and drivers of apparent forest recovery on former croplands in Southwestern China from 2000 to 2015

China is credited with undertaking some of the world’s most ambitious policies to protect and restore forests, which could serve as a role model for other countries. However, the actual environmental consequences of these policies are poorly known. Here, the authors combine remote-sensing analysis with household interviews to assess the nature and drivers of land-cover change in southwestern China between 2000–2015, after China’s major forest protection and reforestation policies came into effect. The authors found that while the region’s gross tree cover grew by 32%, this increase was entirely due to the conversion of croplands to tree plantations, particularly monocultures. Native forests, in turn, suffered a net loss of 6.6%. The pursuit of profit from agricultural or forestry production along with governmental encouragement and mobilization for certain land uses – including tree planting – were the dominant drivers of the observed land-cover change. The authors also found that households’ lack of labor or financial resources, rather than any policy safeguards, was the primary constraint on further conversion of native forests. The authors conclude that to achieve genuine forest recovery along with the resulting environmental benefits, China’s policies must more strongly protect existing native forests and facilitate native forest restoration.

Temperature accelerates the rate fields become forests

Secondary succession, the postdisturbance transition of herbaceous to woody-dominated ecosystems, occurs faster at lower latitudes with important ramifications for ecosystem processes. This pattern could be driven by the direct effect of temperature on tree growth; however, an alternative mechanism is tree–herb competition, which may be more intense in more fertile northern soils. We manipulated soil fertility and herbaceous species composition in identical experiments at six sites spanning the Eastern United States (30–43° N) and monitored the growth and survival of four early successional trees. Tree seedling mass 2 years after sowing was strongly associated with site differences in mean growing season temperature, regardless of species or soil treatment. The effect of temperature was twofold: seedlings grew faster in response to warmer site temperatures, but also due to the reduction of competitive interference from the herbaceous community, which was inhibited in warmer sites. Our results suggest that increasing temperatures will promote a faster transition of fields to forests in temperate ecosystems.

Contrasting ecological roles of non-native ungulates in a novel ecosystem

Conservation has long focused on preserving or restoring pristine ecosystems. However, understanding and managing novel ecosystems has grown in importance as they outnumber pristine ecosystems worldwide. While non-native species may be neutral or detrimental in pristine ecosystems, it is possible that even notorious invaders could play beneficial or mixed roles in novel ecosystems. We examined the effects of two long-established non-native species—Philippine deer (Rusa marianna) and feral pigs (Sus scrofa)—in Guam, Micronesia, where native vertebrate frugivores are functionally absent leaving forests devoid of seed dispersers. We compared the roles of deer and pigs on seedling survival, seed dispersal and plant community structure in limestone karst forests. Deer, even at low abundances, had pronounced negative impacts on forest communities by decreasing seedling and vine abundance. By contrast, pigs showed no such relationship. Also, many viable seeds were found in pig scats, whereas few were found in deer scats, suggesting that pigs, but not deer, provide an ecosystem function—seed dispersal—that has been lost from Guam. Our study presents a discrepancy between the roles of two non-native species that are traditionally managed as a single entity, suggesting that ecological function, rather than identity as a non-native, may be more important to consider in managing novel systems.

Where and why does restoration happen? Ecological and sociopolitical influences on stream restoration in coastal California

The distribution of conservation effort on the landscape is affected by both ecological and social priorities and constraints. Together these influences can result in bias towards certain types of ecological or human communities. The authors evaluate the distribution of restoration projects on the California Central Coast, USA, to evaluate sociopolitical and biophysical influences on the type and distribution of one type of conservation effort. They compiled data on 699 sites with publicly funded stream restoration and management projects completed in the past 30 years and the biophysical and sociopolitical characteristics of the 310 sub-catchments in the study area. Their database contains three categories of stream projects: ecological restoration to benefit natural ecosystems, human-oriented projects to enhance ecosystem services, and data collection projects for planning and monitoring. Both ecological and human-oriented restoration efforts were clustered near the coastline. Stream activities of all kinds were highest in sub-catchments with water quality impairment, high population density, high pro-environmental voting, and a highly educated, wealthy, non-Hispanic white population. Ecological restoration and data collection were also greater in catchments with higher native fish richness. Our findings indicate that restoration activity is aligned with, and perhaps responding to, ecological need, and that restoration efforts are concentrated near human population centers and restoration organizations. Disparities in conservation effort by income, race, and education are concerning and should be evaluated in more depth and in other regions.

Fire management in the Brazilian savanna: First steps and the way forward

Several decades of frustrated attempts to prevent fires in the Brazilian Savanna (Cerrado) have led to deleterious ecological and management consequences. In 2014, the first Integrated Fire Management (IFM) programme was launched in three protected areas (PAs). The IFM programme considers local practices, ecological information, management options and aims to create landscape mosaics of different fire histories to conserve biodiversity, reduce the prevalence of late‐dry season (LDS) wildfires, protect fire‐sensitive vegetation and reduce conflicts between PA managers and local communities. The first 3 years of imposed fire management regimes led to 40%–57% reduction in LDS fires, improved dialogue between researchers, managers and local communities, generating fire management learning communities. This Integrated Fire Management programme represents a major advance in Cerrado management and conservation, by actively managing fires and decreasing the proportion of areas burnt by late‐dry season wildfires. It can contribute to PAs’ management in the Cerrado and other South American fire‐prone ecosystems. Long‐term monitoring and research are essential to understand the ecological implications and to improve fire management practices.

Effects of national ecological restoration projects on carbon sequestration in China from 2001 to 2010

China has launched six key ecological restoration projects since the late 1970s, but the contribution of these projects to terrestrial C sequestration remains unknown. In this study the authors examined the ecosystem C sink in the project area (∼16% of the country’s land area) and evaluated the project-induced C sequestration. The total annual C sink in the project area between 2001 and 2010 was estimated to be 132 Tg C per y, over half of which (74 Tg C per y, 56%) was caused by the implementation of the six projects. This finding indicates that the implementation of the ecological restoration projects in China has significantly increased ecosystem C sequestration across the country.

The ecology and economics of restoration: when, what, where, and how to restore ecosystems

Restoration ecology has provided a suite of tools for accelerating the recovery of ecosystems damaged by drivers of global change. The authors review both the ecological and economic concepts developed in restoration ecology, and offer guidance on when, what, where, and how to restore ecosystems. For when to restore, they highlight the value of pursuing restoration early to prevent ecosystems from crossing tipping points and evaluating whether unassisted natural recovery is more cost-effective than active restoration. For what to restore, they encourage developing a restoration plan with stakeholders that will restore structural, compositional, and functional endpoints, and whose goal is a more resistant and resilient ecosystem. For where to restore, they emphasize developing restoration approaches that can address the impediment of rural poverty in the developing world and identifying and then balancing the ecosystems and regions in most need of restoration and those that are best positioned for restoration success.

The Role of Networks Connecting Native Seed Stakeholders

Connecting stakeholders and facilitating the transfer of knowledge is crucial to improve success in ecological restoration. Like the nodes of the ecological networks we aim to restore, those who work with native seeds are connected and dependent on each other for information and resources to address the challenges of seed conservation, research, production and use. Presented by INSR’s Marcello de Vitis.

Peatland Restoration

50 % of the original peatland area of Finland has been drained for forestry. This had an immense degrading impact on the natural values of mires. Peatland restoration has been found as an effective way to regain these values. More than 25 000 hectares of different types of peatlands has been restored since the beginning of the 1990´s. In restoration the mire must become more permanently waterlogged again. This is best achieved by completely filling in ditches and by removing trees. The results of restoration are evaluated by different monitoring methods.

ROOT – A decision-support tool

Presented by Craig Beatty of LERS and IUCN. Following over three years of development through a partnership between International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and The Natural Capital Project, ROOT (Restoration Opportunities Optimization Tool) is a software tool that optimises trade-offs among different ecosystem services to help decision-makers visualise where investments in restoration could be made that would optimise benefits for multiple landscape goals.

Technically, ROOT applies an integrated linear programming algorithm which optimises and displays the location of the expected ecosystem services generated through restoration. Most notably, it does so for multiple ecosystem services at the same time and can weigh these optimisations based on the location of people who rely on such services. This includes optimising landscape restoration interventions in areas that would generate clean water, or avoiding areas where disadvantaged people might be negatively affected by changes or modifications in land use. The result is knowledge that is not purely biophysical, but instead blends the social priorities of those with the rights to manage land with the ecosystem service benefits that are expected from restoration.

This webinar will explore why ROOT was designed, how it works, and a few case studies showing the different results that it can generate and the implication of those results in national and international large-scale restoration programmes and policies.

Natural Processes for the Restoration of Drastically Disturbed Sites

Presented by SERNW. Dave Polster, Certified Ecological Restoration Practitioner (CERP) presents on effective strategies to understand and utilize natural processes in restoration.

Restoration, Wildfire, Recovery

Presented by SERNW. Vicky Erickson, Lenya Quinn-Davidson, and Karin Riley discuss the role of wildfire and post-wildfire restoration in the Pacific Northwest.

Raising the standard in restoration after mining

Presented by Kingsley Dixon, chair of SER Australasia and Director of the Australian Research Council’s Centre for Mine Site Restoration.

Mining is a global enterprise and combined with oil and gas, occur from the Arctic to Australia and beyond. Since the earliest mining from before the Romans, mining has impacted landscapes, affected livelihoods and is often at odds with traditional land utilisation. Though much of the mining industry globally aspires to high standards of environmental care, few are actively engaged in the process of restoration of sites to a standard that reflect the need to repatriate landscapes and ecosystems that reflect the local environment. In this webinar I will present a snap shot of global impacts, global success stories, emerging technologies for the industry and the role of the International Standards for the Practice of Ecological Restoration in driving higher and better outcomes in the global resources sector.

Species Recovery Manual

Species recovery involves many different disciplines and actors, and responsibility for it at a national level is often unclear, given that it cuts across different ministries and agencies. After various consultations, it was felt by BGCI and IABG that it would be valuable to produce a manual that would clarify the aims and purpose of species recovery, set out the various steps involved, and indicate good practice. This manual is aimed specifically at conservation practitioners but also includes comprehensive bibliographic references, which enable more in depth reading on the topics covered in this publication. The manual includes chapters and case studies from members of the Ecological Restoration Alliance of Botanic Gardens.

Ecological Restoration in the Midwest: Past, Present, and Future

This study brings together a group of scholars and practitioners to show how midwestern restoration efforts have developed, and where they are headed, through an analysis of six cutting-edge case studies that highlight thirty restoration efforts and research sites from across the region. The contributing authors uncover a vast network of interested citizens and volunteer groups committed to preserving the region’s environment. The book also pinpoints emerging issues of importance in the Midwest, such as climate change and the increase in invasive species it is expected to bring to the region.

Summary for policymakers of the IPBES thematic assessment report on land degradation and restoration

This is a summary for policymakers of the IPBES thematic assessment of land degradation and restoration. The assessment covers the global status of and trends in land degradation, by region and land cover type; the effect of degradation on biodiversity values, ecosystem services and human well-being; and the state of knowledge, by region and land cover type, of ecosystem restoration extent and options. The assessment was undertaken to enhance the knowledge base for policies for addressing land degradation, desertification and the restoration of degraded land.

Restoration Resource Center: A New Tool for Restorationists

In development for more than a year, the Restoration Resource Center (RRC) is an online platform for exchanging knowledge and experience through ecological restoration projects, publications, and other resources from around the world. Levi Wickwire presents the RRC, including an overview of its history as well as a tutorial of how to search and submit resources to the database. A searchable, crowd-sourced database, it already includes over 215 projects and 2,000 resources ranging from peer-reviewed articles to technical manuals and webinars.

Restoration Strategies for Pollinator Habitats in Urban Landscapes

Presented by Rory Denovan, Restoration Ecologist & Strategic Advisor for city of Seattle; Executive Board Member for Society for Ecological Restoration Northwest Chapter; Board Member for Washington Native Plant Society. Rory presents his extensive works involving the restoration of urban landscapes for the purpose of establishing pollinator habitats.

Biodiversity guidelines for forest landscape restoration opportunities assessments

These guidelines are intended to provide more context, more resources and fresh perspectives to the ongoing global interaction between biodiversity conservation and forest landscape restoration. They do so in the context of the Restoration Opportunities Assessment Methodology (ROAM), which is being used by dozens of countries and jurisdictions to help practitioners working on identifying and realizing their landscape restoration goals — and they should be interpreted as a companion to ROAM.

Spatially designed revegetation—why the spatial arrangement of plants should be as important to revegetation as they are to natural systems

The spatial arrangements of plants, both within and between species, play a key role in natural systems and influence many fundamental ecological processes (e.g. survival, competition, facilitation, pollination, and seed dispersal) and ecosystem functions (e.g. habitat value, erosion, water, and nutrient capture). Despite this knowledge, fine‐scale planting arrangements are rarely considered during restoration plantings, yet manipulation of planting designs has the potential to aid the development of resilient and self‐sustaining ecosystems. Here, the authors outline how the spatial arrangement of plants can influence processes both at the vegetation level and more broadly at the ecosystem level. The review is focused on woodland systems, but also draws on key examples from grassland ecosystems. Finally, they outline components of population and community level arrangements (e.g. spacing, aggregation, community composition) that can be considered during restoration plantings—spatially designed revegetation—which are likely to lead to improved ecological outcomes of woodland and grassy woodland revegetation.

The emergence of the social‐ecological restoration concept

Many ecosystems in the world are the result of a close interaction between local people and their environment, which are currently recognized as social‐ecological systems (SoES). Natural catastrophes or long‐standing social and political turmoil can degrade these SoES to a point where human societies are no longer autonomous and their supporting ecosystems are highly degraded. Here, the authors focus on the special case of the restoration of SoES termed social‐ecological restoration (SoER), which is characterized as a restoration process that cannot avoid simultaneously dealing with ecological and social issues. In practice, SoER is analogous in many ways to the general principles of ecological restoration, but it differs in three key aspects: (1) the first actions may be initially intended for human groups that need to recover minimum living standards; (2) the SoER process would often be part of a healing process for local people where cultural values of ecosystems play an essential role; and (3) there is a strong dependency on external economic inputs, as the people belonging to the SoES may be incapable of reorganizing themselves on their own and supporting ecosystems can no longer self‐recover.

Communicating useful results from restoration ecology research

Interactions between restoration ecologists and stakeholders (policy makers and decision makers, volunteers, public supporters) benefit from clear communication of research findings. Given that adaptive management (e.g. learning while restoring) already stresses frequent and effective discourse among researchers and stakeholders, it seems that a new specialty under a new term, “translational ecology,” adds more confusion than clarity. Communicating technical information to nontechnical audiences benefits from simple rules—be clear and concise, retain familiar terms that serve well, and use fewer words.

Post-fire soil management

Soils are an important natural capital and can be negatively affected by high severity fires. The capacity of soil to recover from the degradation caused by fire disturbance depends on fire history, ash properties, topography, post-fire weather, vegetation recuperation and post-fire management. These factors are interdependent, and can increase or decrease the effects of high severity fires on soil degradation. Normally, ecosystems are resilient to fire disturbance and a scenario of no intervention should be considered. Post-fire management should be carried out in specific areas that are more susceptible to degradation. Post-fire interventions such as mulching are important to decrease soil degradation, whereas salvage logging increases it. Overall, the management options that we choose can trigger or reduce positive and negative impacts on soil.

Restoration and ecological management of boreal forests

Presented by Kaisa Junninen of Metsähallitus Parks & Wildlife Finland.This presentation is an overview on the measures, ecological effects and challenges of restoration and ecological management of Finnish forest reserves. Over 16,000 hectares of heath forest have been treated with restoration measures in protected areas of Finland since 2003. The measures include prescribed burning, increasing dead wood, opening small canopy gaps, removing exotic plant species, and others. Burning in particular has proven to be ecologically effective, whereas artificial creation of dead wood creates unexpected ecological challenges, including the effects of wood quality on decayer communities, and the increased risk of bark beetle outbreaks due to warming climate.

Networked and embedded scientific experiments will improve restoration outcomes

Vast areas of degraded land have proliferated worldwide. In response to this transformation, ambitious targets have been set to restore degraded ecosystems, such as the Bonn Challenge, which aims to restore 350 million ha of forestland by 2030. Achieving such goals will require a larger evidence base of restoration studies, which could be realized by systematically embedding scientific experiments within restoration programs. We examine the feasibility of this strategy with examples of successful transdisciplinary research involving embedded experiments in associated fields, and recommend that such field sites be linked to create a global network of embedded experiments. To unify a networked approach, we call on restoration stakeholders to develop acceptable industry standards of experimental design. Finally, we suggest how to use this strategy effectively to meet the biome‐scale challenges of the coming decades.