Restoration Overview: THE COMPLETE IDIOT

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Restoration OverviewTHE COMPLETE IDIOTS
GUIDE TO Ecological Restoration

• Wally Covington
• School of Forestry
• and
• The Ecological Restoration Institute
• Northern Arizona University

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The Least You Need to Know(apologies to Alpha
Books series)

• Greater Ecosystems of the West are going to hell
  in a hand basket
• Ecological restoration offers a way to restore
  ecologic, economic, and social health
• It matters what treatments we choose
• Collaborative approaches are essential

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Ecological restoration presents us with an
opportunity to convert a liability into an asset
for present and future generations.
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What does the Ecological Restoration Institute
do?we are a service organization

• Knowledge discovery and synthesis
• Not just research in the traditional sense
• Collaborative research in service of management
• Knowledge transfer
• Not just academic publications
• Practical documents, both printed and electronic
• Not just teaching academic course work
• Continuing education, both directed and
  self-directed
• Knowledge application
• Work with practitioners on a broad range of
  projects
• Work with local to national policymakers
• Work with community based groups, private land
  owners,

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Why is ecosystem restoration relevant to national
forest management?

• The catastrophic fire seasons of 74, 77, 80,
  88, 94, 96, 00, and 02 have long been
  predicted.
• Unprecedented forest insect and disease were also
  predicted.
• Lengthened fire seasons, increasing drought,
  increasing urban wildland interface conflicts
  long predicted are now a reality.
• Predicted loss of critical human and wildlife
  habitat is occurring at an accelerating rate.
• The trend will clearly continue.
• There is a strong consensus that restoring forest
  health is the best way to prevent further
  degradation and set forest on a path to long term
  sustainability

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What is ecosystem restoration?

• Ecosystem restoration is not a fixed set of
  procedures
• It is not a recipe for land management
• It is a broad intellectual and scientific
  framework for developing beneficial human
  wildland interactions
• It consists not only of restoring ecosystems, but
  also of developing human uses of wildlands
  compatible with ecological integrity and
  ecosystem sustainability
• But, ecosystem restoration is not a panacea

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Definitions (SER Primer 2002)

• Ecological restoration assists recovery of the
  (evolutionary/ecological) trajectory of degraded
  ecosystems
• Reference ecosystem (landscape)
• Active and passive restoration
• Monitoring and evaluation
• Restoration planning
• Ecological restoration and restoration ecology
• Integration of ecological restoration into larger
  programs

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Restoration planning

• Rationale for why restoration is needed
• Ecological description of sites to be restored
• Statement of goals and objectives
• Description of reference system
• How restoration sites will integrate with greater
  landscape
• Explicit plans, schedules, and budgets, including
  mid-course corrections (adaptive management)
• Performance standards, monitoring, and evaluation
  (include control plot where feasible)
• Strategies for long-term maintenance

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Crownfires are the latest in a long series of
symptoms of declining ecosystem health.

• Loss of herbaceous cover
• Increased erosion
• Irruption of tree populations
• Decline in water balance
• Loss of plant and animal diversity
• Loss of esthetic values
• Unnatural insect and disease epidemics
• Shift to catastrophic crownfires

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2000 Pumpkin, Pipe, and Power fires
The time for quibbling over size of trees to be
thinned, WUI buffer distance, and what to do is
over.
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We should heal the patient, not just treat the
symptoms

• Ecosystem restoration not only treats crownfire
  symptoms, but also attacks the underlying causes
  of ecosystem health decline.
• Thinning or burning alone are short-term
  treatments that only temporarily relieve the
  symptoms.
• The long-term solution is restoration of
  ecosystem health.

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This is a big problem--but we can solve it

• Restoration based approaches are proven at a
  small scale (100 ac) in a variety of ecosystem
  types
• They must be tested and refined as we apply them
  at large scales (10-50 thousand ac) in an
  adaptive management approach
• Greater ecosystem (1-3 million acre) assessments
  are essential for assuring that restoration
  investments are strategic

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What exactly is a greater ecosystem?

• Greater ecosystems are a regional complex of
  ecosystems with common landscape-level
  characteristics linked by wide ranging wildlife,
  landscape scale disturbance regimes, and, yes,
  human communities as keystone citizens among the
  community of organisms.

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• We must think and act at a scale and pace
  appropriate to the forest health crisis.

 
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Without objective scientific knowledge, treatment
decisions are dominated by ill informed
speculation, subjective judgment, bias, and
ideology. What is needed are treatments based
on thorough knowledge, reasoned analysis, and
factual evidence.
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Reference Restoration Treatment

• Retain trees which predate settlement
• Retain postsettlement trees needed to
  re-establish presettlement structure
• Thin and remove excess trees
• Rake heavy fuels from base of trees
• Burn to emulate natural disturbance regime
• Seed with natives/control exotics

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Change Basic Prescription for Specific Resource
Objectives

• Might leave more trees to accommodate specific
  resource management objectives, e.g., screening
  cover for human or wildlife habitat goals, future
  wood harvesting, favoring specific uses
• Might leave fewer trees to accommodate other
  objectives, e.g., to favor viewsheds, wildlife
  goals, grazing, water balance

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Alternative Restoration Prescriptions Produce
Very Different Outcomes
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Full Restoration
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Minimal Thinning
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Burn Only
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Predicted Fire Characteristics for Plot 23June
97th-percentile weather, 30 mph
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• Comprehensive ecosystem restoration approaches
  not only reduce crownfire threat, but also
  improve forest health and resource use
  opportunities for present and future generations.

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• There is broad scientific, social and political
  support for working with natural tendencies in
  restoring the dry forests of the Southwest

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Where do we go from here?

• We must all become conversant in the principles
  and terminology of ecosystem health restoration
• We must educate stakeholders, including those
  within our organizations
• We must move forward systematically and
  resolutely to restore ecosystems before they
  unravel beyond repair
• We must do this in the context of the larger
  social and political natural resource issues

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The Least You Need to Know

• Greater Ecosystems of the West are going to hell
  in a hand basket
• Ecological restoration offers a way to restore
  ecologic, economic, and social health
• It matters what treatments we choose
• Collaborative approaches are essential