Ecological Restoration

Burning South Prairie at Green Oaks - 2013

Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown and Redgrave Hall

A (Very) Brief History of Ecological Restoration

Aldo Leopold planting at the Shack - 1936

CCC crewman planting Curtis Prairie - 1936

CCC crew watering Curtis Prairie – late 1930’s

University of Wisconsin Arboretum

The Founders of Green Oaks – Henry Green, George Ward,Alvah Green, and Paul Shepard - 1955

Green Oaks prior to prairie planting

Early prairie establishment at Green Oaks

Pete Schrammburning theprairie

Green Oaks from the Air

100 sites monitored for long-term studies of restoration success

Plan for Green Network, Chicago Area

Conservation of Natural Areas

Conservation of natural areas and their associated biological diversity depends on two fundamental tools:

1. Keeping the natural areas that remain natural in the future - this is achieved by some combination of protection and management including purchase of lands by conservation agencies and wise stewardship of natural lands in both public and private ownership, with all management focused on maintaining or improving existing natural areas

Conservation of Natural Areas

2. Replacing at least some of the natural areas which have been lost - replacing natural areas means putting a prairie or forest or wetland where it is presently nonexistent but where it once existed - such replacement is often termed reconstruction or restoration

Ecological Restoration

• Restoration - returns an area to its original species composition and structure by an active program of reintroduction, in particular planting and seeding of the original species – some people restrict restoration to discussing sites where some remnant of original community still exists

• Reconstruction - restoration where no remnant of original community still exists

What are we trying to do in our ecological restorations?

• “Ecological restoration is the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed.” (Society for Ecological Restoration Science and Policy Working Group 2002)

Another definition

Ecological Restoration- the full or partial replacement of biological populations and/or their habitats that have been extinguished or diminished.

Ideally the restoration will return normal ecosystem function to an area and hopefully the project will also have social or economic value to humans

Restoration Ecology is the study of restoration; ER is the process of restoration

Semi-natural habitat

• Semi-natural habitat has some human influence in maintaining its current structure and function, but still has all the species which would be expected to occur in the area in a natural state

Among the objectives of various restoration projects are:

1. creating visually attractive vegetation

2. providing educational and possibly scientific interest in the community

3. safeguarding rare species or scarce ecological communities

4. constructing low maintenance landscapes

Big Scale Prairie Restoration

Progress at Midewin

Challenges at Midewin

Benefits of Restoration

• There are many benefits to habitat restoration including direct economic benefits such as found for prairies, forests and wetlands in their timber value, recreational value or value of food harvested as fish or game

• Other values include - genetic value of species from millions of years of natural selection

• The scientific benefit of study of these ecosystems,• Wildlife habitat and food chain support,• Erosion and sedimentation control,• Carbon and nutrient retention,• Maintenance of biological diversity for future generations

(heritage value)

Beach Bluff Restoration – Santa Monica, California

Butterfly Valley – South Africa

Quarry Restoration – Perth, Australia

Native Vegetation Restoration - Brazil

Stream and Countryside Restoration - Netherlands

Stream and Countryside Restoration - Netherlands

Roadside restoration - Canada

Restoration of nuclear waste site – Fernald, Ohio

Students planting at Fernald

Ocelot Restoration, Sonora, Mexico

Restoration of grazing lands and Konik horses in Latvia

• Geoengineering: Our Last Hope, or a False Promise?

• By CLIVE HAMILTON

• Published: May 26, 2013 The New York Times

• CANBERRA, Australia — ‘THE concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere recently surpassed 400 parts per million for the first time in three million years. If you are not frightened by this fact, then you are ignoring or denying science.

• Relentlessly rising greenhouse-gas emissions, and the fear that the earth might enter a climate emergency from which there would be no return, have prompted many climate scientists to conclude that we urgently need a Plan B: geoengineering.

• Geoengineering — the deliberate, large-scale intervention in the climate system to counter global warming or offset some of its effects — may enable humanity to mobilize its technological power to seize control of the planet’s climate system, and regulate it in perpetuity.’

Good Habitat Restoration

• Ground rules for habitat restoration and reconstruction can only be established once the objectives for each project are clearly stated and the appropriate site and situation for the project can be found - thus each restoration project will have its own ground rules and its own operating and management plan

Good Habitat Restoration

• Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of habitat restoration is the challenge that it presents to our understanding of ecology and botany

• Restoration projects are continually thwarted by incomplete information ranging from the environmental requirements of individual species to the functioning of entire communities and ecosystems

Good Habitat Restoration

• For good habitat design we need to know much more about critical population sizes of the species concerned; the dispersal ability of organisms; the role of isolation and connectivity of ecosystems in landscapes; the importance of fertility in determining community diversity; and the relevance of gap size and disturbance in maintaining species-rich communities, to name only a few critical areas

• Habitat restoration provides us with the both the tools and the laboratory to answer those questions

Why Field Botany?

"Within a few weeks now Draba, the smallest flower that blows, will sprinkle every sandy place with small blooms.

He who hopes for spring with upturned eye never sees so small a thing as Draba. He who despairs of spring with downcast eye steps on it, unknowing. He who searches for spring with his knees in the mud finds it, in abundance….”

- Aldo Leopold

Draba reptans – Common Whitlow-grass

Draba reptans flower