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

Chapter 8 Integrating Restoration and Succession 169
Table 8.1 Fields of study that strongly influence restoration, the primary impact each has on
restoration, and potential problems conducting restoration without addressing the contributions from
each field.
Field Impact Problems if omitted
Succession Predictions of temporal
change and setting targets
Wrong trajectory identified for biodiversity outcomes,
wrong species mixtures, arrested trajectory, improper
manipulation of soil nutrients, goals too narrow
Assembly Filters Difficulty starting, mismatch of available propagules
and the local environment
Landscape Ecology Regional information Efforts limited to a single ecosystem or patch, poor
exchange and
estimates of role of surrounding biota, applying a
extrapolation
“solution” to the wrong place
Disturbance Ecology Initiation and boundaries Multiple restarts, loss of biomass and soil organic
matter from improper species choices, inadequate
site stabilization
Climate Change Shifting reference systems Old communities no longer function as references or
propagule sources, complications of novel
communities
Historical Ecology Legacies Wrong targets set, belowground influences ignored
Environmental Ethics Aesthetics, goals relating to Societal values and expectations not achieved, visually
and Philosophy naturalness and place unpleasant, ill-fitting or unachievable targets and
lack of project support or maintenance
introduced in Chapter 1: why, where, what, how, and when? Explicitly, what are
the perceived environmental or ecological issues leading to why restoration is
being undertaken? What is the environmental domain and spatial extent where
restoration will take place? How does the technical evaluation of what to expect
help set end-points or targets following restoration? What evaluation of costs
and benefits, operational control, resources, and knowledge is needed in order
to decide how to implement the restoration program? Finally, when are physical
manipulations of sites, vegetation establishment, ongoing reviews of progress,
monitoring, and further interventions needed?
8.2 Why Is Restoration Needed?
It is often obvious why ecosystem, landscape, and mine site restoration is
needed, given the visual evidence from most parts of the world of increasing
impacts by humans and natural events on landscapes. These impacts have
left large areas of land and water bodies polluted, reduced biodiversity and have
dramatically decreased the use that can be made of our natural resources. Nevertheless,
it is important to decide if and why restoration is required in particular
contexts, and there are a variety of different biological and practical reasons
why restoration activities are carried out. As discussed by Hobbs and Norton
(1996), restoration is fundamentally conducted to improve or sustain ecosystem
goods and services, which may include aesthetic and societal preferences. To
achieve this broad goal, restoration activities may be required to reverse severe,
localized disturbances such as tailings from mine sites, to reinstate productive
capacity in degraded agricultural systems, to maintain or return conservation
values in protected areas, or to reinstate broader landscape processes essential
to the continuation of both rural and urban production and conservation enterprises.
The scope for applying successional concepts to restoration activities
was shown in the preceding chapters to vary greatly in each of these cases.