Linking Restoration and Ecological Succession (Springer ... - Inecol

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Aboveground–Belowground Linkages,
Ecosystem Development, and
Ecosystem Restoration
Key Points
1. All ecosystems consist of aboveground and belowground components that
interact with each other to drive community and ecosystem properties. The
feedbacks between these two components are therefore potentially useful
for understanding the principles of succession and restoration.
2. We provide three case studies in which understanding aboveground–
belowground feedbacks are relevant for succession and restoration. These
involve human induced changes in densities of browsing herbivores with
particular reference to deer in New Zealand forests; the impacts of fire and
fire suppression with particular reference to boreal forests in northern Sweden;
and the belowground impacts of invasive nonnative plants and their
feedbacks aboveground.
3. Finally, we explore the utility of the aboveground–belowground model as an
approach that can help us understand successional processes and that can be
incorporated into restoration efforts. In doing this we also propose profitable
areas of future research.
3.1 Introduction
All terrestrial ecosystems consist of explicit aboveground and belowground
biotic components. Although these have traditionally been considered in isolation
from one another, there has been increasing recognition over the past
decade or so that these components interact with each other to drive processes
at both the community and ecosystem levels of resolution (e.g., van der Putten
et al. 2001, Wardle et al. 2004a, Bardgett 2005). Plants (primary producers)
provide the input of carbon required by the decomposer community, while the
decomposers in turn break down organic matter and thus regulate the supply of
available nutrients for the plants. Further, aboveground herbivores, that biota
associated with live roots (pathogens, root herbivores, and mutualists), and their
predators exert important effects on feedbacks between the aboveground and
belowground subsystems. Over the past two decades there has been increasing
recognition that biotic factors are fundamental determinants of the functioning
David A. Wardle and Duane A. Peltzer
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