Restoration Ecology

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Restoration Ecology
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Restoration Ecology

• Chrissy Field, SF

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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

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Restoration Ecology

• May be able to trace restoration back to Aldo
  Leopold in the 1930s 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

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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
• Ormoving a degraded system back towards one of
  greater structural and functional diversity

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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

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Restoration Ecology
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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

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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

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Restoration Ecology

• The majority of restoration activities target the
  plant communitywhy?
• When might animals be involved?
• Full restoration at all levels has never been
  attempted, although it is the goal

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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

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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

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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

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Restoration Ecology Conservation
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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

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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 wetlandfarmer vs. duck hunter

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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)

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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

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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

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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)

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Restoration Ecology

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

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Restoration Ecology

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

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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?

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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

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Restoration Ecology

• Population genetics can play an important role in
  RE. How?
• Does this change with a relatively large
  disturbance and large distribution project?

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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)

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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

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Restoration Ecology

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

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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 Unions (IUCN) created guidelines
  for reintroductions

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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

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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

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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

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Restoration in Marine Habitats

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

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Restoration in Marine Habitats

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

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Restoration in Marine Habitats

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

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Restoration in Marine Habitats
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Restoration in Marine Habitats

• Unfortunately, many projects stop at this point
  and assume if structure is provided, the reef
  will comehow?
• Sometimes restoration will include translocation
  of healthy fragments

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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

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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

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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

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Environmental Regulations and Restoration

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

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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)

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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

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Restoration Ecology