Restoration Ecology

Restoration Ecology

• Chrissy Field, SF

Restoration Ecology

• Due to the severe impact humans have already inflicted on the landscape and the expensive cost of real estate, restoring a landscape may be more feasible than other options

• This is a relatively new field and many advances have been made

• However, we rarely restore something to its former glory and functionality

Restoration Ecology

• May be able to trace restoration back to Aldo Leopold in the 1930’s at the UW arboretum (120 ha forest)

• RE draws upon many disciplines and subdisciplines of the natural sciences including landscape ecology, hydrology, geomorphology, soil science, geochemistry, animal behavior, pop biology, theoretical biology, invasion ecology and evolutionary ecol

Restoration Ecology

• Specifically, RE is “the process of intentionally altering a site to establish a defined, indigenous, historic ecosystem”

• The goal is to emulate the structure, function, diversity and dynamics of the specific ecosystem

• Or…moving a degraded system back towards one of greater structural and functional diversity

Restoration Ecology

• It is an iterative process:– 1) examines preexisting, historic, and

current reference conditions prior to designing the plan

– 2) developing a restoration plan– 3) obtain permits, do the work– 4) implementing plan, although complex

(e.g. hydrology, soil, plant & animal responses)

– 5) monitoring the site

Restoration Ecology

Restoration Ecology

• RE may take many forms: restoration, enhancement, reclamation, re-creation, rehabilitation, augmentation, and translocation

• Rehabilitation is simply improving degraded habitat, maybe not restoring it

• Reclamation may be stabilization of the land and/or minimizing further degradation

Restoration Ecology

• Re-creation is an attempt to return to historic condition, accuracy…

• Replacement may recreate a site, which may not be historically accurate

• Enhancement or augmentation are attempting to add to the degraded condition, but not fully functional

Restoration Ecology

• The majority of restoration activities target the plant community…why?

• When might animals be involved?• Full restoration at all levels has never

been attempted, although it is the goal

Restoration Ecology & Conservation

• RE is a relatively young science and as such, has both advocates and critics

• Some argue it is important and a good compromise while others suggest it is wasteful and expensive

• There are some legal underpinning such as the Clean Water Act which requires restoration

Restoration Ecology & Conservation

• A potential benefit of RE is the opportunity to conduct ecological studies, especially in community ecology, invasive biology, succession biology

• A potential negative is that many systems are now viewed as ‘expendable’ or ‘replaceable’ on another site

Restoration Ecology & Conservation

• Steps in designing and implementing ecological restorations

• Goals and design should be reviewed and revised as data on site conditions are collected, community concerns addressed, and as the constructed restoration evolves

Restoration Ecology & Conservation

Restoration Ecology

• Site assessment is the first step, usually in the form of surveys and then exploring the literature (published papers, maps, reports)

• Legalities must be determined• Assess environmental history of site• If not available, contemporary

comparisons maybe appropriate

Restoration Ecology

• RE is an inherently subjective process and determining ‘success’ may require the establishment of goals

• Goals will depend upon local constraints, objectives, and context of participants– Restored wetland…farmer vs. duck

hunter

Restoration Ecology

• Restoration design requires multidisciplinary approach (genes to ecosystem, as well as natural sciences)

• Plans should dictate the physical transformation proposed for the site and the desired outcome (target species)

Restoration Ecology

• There are many ways to implement a design, depending on time, money, labor, practicality

• Getting as many people involved in the implementation will get locals to buy into the restoration effort

• Proper documentation and design can subsequently serve as an experiment

Restoration Ecology

• ER are long-term propositions and proper monitoring becomes less-likely

• For adaptive management, it is necessary

• Frequently disturbing site will release or open community to ‘weedy’ species

• Compliance vs. scientific

Restoration Ecology

• Restoration challenges are numerous as we are generally dealing with dynamic, complex, and unique systems

• Furthermore, the site may have many limitations (landscape context, size, heterogeneity, plus more…)

Restoration Ecology

• It may be difficult to properly address restoration because we lack knowledge

• B&M have relatively good databases, but most other groups lack good information

• Even when we know the organisms (e.g. clapper rail) we can screw up (CS 15.1);

Restoration Ecology

• When we identify knowledge gaps, we may be able to then fill them

Restoration Ecology

• For example, what if herbivory was limiting reestablishment of native sp in a grassland? What measures could we take?

• What about if N is limiting?

Restoration Ecology

• Restoration is frequently restricted to the plant community

• However, even if animals are the focus of the conservation effort, restoring habitat may be the best action (but see CS 15.4 & 15.5)

• Furthermore, a ‘functioning’ ecosystem should ‘trickle-up’ and eventually affect the entire community

Restoration Ecology

• Population genetics can play an important role in RE. How?

• Does this change with a relatively large disturbance and large distribution project?

Restoration Ecology

• Restoration effects that focus on a small scale may succeed in the short term, but fail in the longer because the larger ecological context required to allow these restoration efforts to be self-sustaining is either not present, too degraded, operating at too small a scale

• Some times, some things may not even be able to be addressed (e.g. hydrology)

Restoration Ecology

• Many local restoration projects cannot draw on larger or regional populations to recruit from and consequently, may not reflect historical conditions

• It may be necessary to restore them to a stable, but less diverse current state

Restoration Ecology

• While RE claims to be interdisciplinary, in reality it may focus on a single sp or single environmental factor

Restoration Ecology

• Most animal restoration attempt to bring individuals back to a site rather than foster or enhance a preexisting pop(n)

• Most animal reintroductions have been charismatic megafauna (e.g. wolf, CA condor, buffalo, beaver)

• The Reintroduction Specialist Group of the World Conservation Union’s (IUCN) created guidelines for reintroductions

Restoration Ecology

• Step 1: conduct a feasibility study (autecology, availability of stockers, fulfilling same functional role)

• Step 2: select sites w/in historic range, but habitat not vulnerable to same threats, and is protected

• Step 3: ID and evaluate stock (genetics)• Step 4: evaluate social, political, and

economic conditions for long-term survival

Restoration Ecology

• Step 5: involve all stakeholders and get proper financing; design as experiment to judge success

• Step 6: post-release monitoring should be done using an adaptive model

Restoration Ecology

• Some of the common problems associated with reintroductions include: high juvenile mortality, loss of rare alleles and genetic diversity, reproductive dysfunction, and other problems associated with inbreeding of small populations

Restoration in Marine Habitats

• Marine restoration has received very little attention… but there are a number of efforts (where?)

Restoration in Marine Habitats

• Mangrove systems are strongly being addressed… previously the major threat had been clearing for shrimp ponds

Restoration in Marine Habitats

• In many coral reef restoration projects, physical structure is placed on bottom

Restoration in Marine Habitats

Restoration in Marine Habitats

• Unfortunately, many projects stop at this point and assume if structure is provided, the reef will come…how?

• Sometimes restoration will include translocation of healthy fragments

Environmental Regulations and Restoration

• Restoration can be expensive (e.g. $3ft2 or $130K/acre) and many potential pitfalls exist

• Regulation in the US– Inspired by the ‘dust bowl’, the Natural

Resources Conservation Service develops and disseminates comprehensive info on management techniques for soil and water

Environmental Regulations and Restoration

• In 1969, NEPA was passed and proactively established environmental standards

• Nixon created the EPA to coordinate and oversee NEPA

• Wetland restoration is in large part a result of the Clean Water Act (’72) which dictated “no net loss of areas and/or function”

Environmental Regulations and Restoration

• Other significant laws: ESA (’73)– “to provide a means whereby the

ecosystems upon which endangered ad threatened species depend may be conserved and to provide a program for the conservation of such endangered and threatened species”

• Unfortunately, the ESA allows the taking of plants, but not animals (unless endangered animal present)…but there are some state laws protecting end plants

Environmental Regulations and Restoration

• For those projects that are expected to impact endangered species, mitigation of impacted habitat may be required

Environmental Regulations and Restoration

• Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (1977) attempt to protect the adverse impact of environmental surface mining (particularly coal)

• In theory, mines must commit to returning the land to pre-mine conditions

• Unfortunately, this does not apply to any pre-1977 site, as well as many other types of minerals (e.g. gold, silver, lead)

Environmental Regulations and Restoration

• There is a great deal of variation from one country to another regarding the regulations of mining

• The United Nations Conference on Human Environment (1972) attempted to stop the impact of mining

• In the Rio de Janeiro (’92) summit they specifically addressed reclamation of degraded habitats

Restoration Ecology