Journal ArticleDOI
Evaluating Ecological Restoration Success: A Review of the Literature
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TLDR
This article conducted a literature review to determine trends in evaluations of restoration projects and identify key knowledge gaps that need to be addressed, and quantified the extent that key attributes of success, including ecological (vegetation structure, species diversity and abundance, and ecosystem functioning) and socioeconomic, were addressed by these papers along with trends in publication and restoration characteristics.Abstract:
Assessing the success of ecological restoration projects is critical to justify the use of restoration in natural resource management and to improve best practice. Although there are extensive discussions surrounding the characteristics that define and measure successful restoration, monitoring or evaluation of projects in practice is widely thought to have lagged behind. We conducted a literature review to determine trends in evaluations of restoration projects and identify key knowledge gaps that need to be addressed. We searched the Web of Knowledge plus two additional restoration journals not found in the database for empirical papers that assessed restoration projects post-implementation. We quantified the extent that key attributes of success, including ecological (vegetation structure, species diversity and abundance, and ecosystem functioning) and socioeconomic, were addressed by these papers along with trends in publication and restoration characteristics. Encouragingly, we found the number of empirical evaluations has grown substantially in recent years. The increased age of restoration projects and number of papers that assessed ecological functions since previous reviews of the literature is also a positive development. Research is still heavily skewed toward United States and Australia, however, and identifying an appropriate reference site needs further investigation. Of particular concern is the dearth of papers identified in the literature search that included any measure of socioeconomic attributes. Focusing future empirical research on quantifying ecosystem services and other socioeconomic outcomes is essential for understanding the full benefits and costs of ecological restoration and to support its use in natural resource management.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Advances in restoration ecology: rising to the challenges of the coming decades
Michael P. Perring,Michael P. Perring,Rachel J. Standish,Rachel J. Standish,Jodi N. Price,Michael D. Craig,Michael D. Craig,Todd E. Erickson,Katinka X. Ruthrof,Andrew S. Whiteley,Leonie E. Valentine,Richard J. Hobbs +11 more
TL;DR: This review of conceptual developments in restoration ecology over the last 30 years is reviewed in the context of changing restoration goals which reflect increased societal awareness of the scale of environmental degradation and the recognition that inter-disciplinary approaches are needed to tackle environmental problems.
Journal ArticleDOI
Contemporary forest restoration: A review emphasizing function
TL;DR: The science underpinning contemporary approaches to forest restoration practice is synthesized and some major approaches for altering structure in degraded forest stands are presented, and approaches for restoration of two key ecosystem processes, fire and flooding are described.
Journal ArticleDOI
Ecological Restoration of Streams and Rivers: Shifting Strategies and Shifting Goals
TL;DR: In the field of river restoration, a plethora of new studies worldwide provide data on why and how rivers are being restored as well as the project outcomes as mentioned in this paper, and though there is well-accepted theory to support this, research on methods to implement and assess functional restoration projects is in its infancy.
Journal ArticleDOI
A global meta-analysis on the ecological drivers of forest restoration success
Renato Crouzeilles,Renato Crouzeilles,Renato Crouzeilles,Michael Curran,Mariana Simões Larraz Ferreira,David B. Lindenmayer,Carlos E. V. Grelle,José María Rey Benayas +7 more
TL;DR: A meta-analysis encompassing 221 study landscapes worldwide reveals forest restoration enhances biodiversity by 15–84% and vegetation structure by 36–77%, compared with degraded ecosystems.
Habitat Restoration - Do We Know What We're Doing? (Review)
James R. Miller,Richard J. Hobbs +1 more
TL;DR: There is a need to move to a clearer and more systematic approach to habitat restoration that considers appropriate goals linked to target species or suites of species, as well as the ecological, financial, and social constraints on what is possible.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Cost-effectiveness of dryland forest restoration evaluated by spatial analysis of ecosystem services
Jennifer C. Birch,Adrian C. Newton,Claudia Alvarez Aquino,Elena Cantarello,Cristian Echeverría,Thomas Kitzberger,Ignacio Schiappacasse,Natalia Tejedor Garavito +7 more
TL;DR: Estimating the net value of ecosystem service benefits under different reforestation scenarios in Latin America shows that passive restoration is cost-effective for all study areas on the basis of the services analyzed, whereas the benefits from active restoration are generally outweighed by the relatively high costs involved.
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Stream restoration and enhancement projects: is anyone monitoring?
Jeffrey S. Bash,Clare M. Ryan +1 more
TL;DR: Although monitoring appears to be taking place in slightly more than half of the projects surveyed, the nature of the data collected varies widely across projects, and in most cases the monitoring effort is voluntary.
Journal ArticleDOI
Vegetation structure, species diversity, and ecosystem processes as measures of restoration success
TL;DR: The Subjective Bray Curtis Ordination is a useful approach for evaluating different restoration techniques or identifying measures that are recovering slowly and would benefit from additional management to determine the success of a restoration project.
Journal ArticleDOI
Theories for ecological restoration in changing environment: Toward ‘futuristic’ restoration
TL;DR: A theoretical framework for ‘futuristic’ restoration, in terms of goals, trajectories, evaluation criteria, and monitoring, along with a historical perspective is presented in this paper.
Journal ArticleDOI
More than just trees: Assessing reforestation success in tropical developing countries
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a review of reforestation assessment that highlights the need to not only consider short-term establishment success, but also longer-term growth and maturation success, environmental success and socio-economic success.