Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functional Enhancement by Forest Restoration: A Meta‐analysis in China

Abstract

Large‐scale forest loss and degradation have dire consequences for biodiversity maintenance and provision of vital ecosystem services. Despite recent increasing efforts for forest restoration and sustainable management, there have been no comparative studies of biological taxonomy and multiple ecosystem functions to assess the effectiveness of forest restoration programmes, and how they vary through space and time. Here, we provided a quantitative assessment of the recovery of biodiversity and ecosystem functions by forest restoration in China using a meta‐analysis of 172 studies. We found that biodiversity and ecosystem functions were substantially increased in restored forests comparing with the degraded states. However, these restoration effects varied considerably by degradation origin, restoration approach, restoration age, ecological domains, taxonomic group and ecosystem function that is measured. Results also revealed that forest restoration from degraded states could not lead to full recovery of biodiversity and ecosystem functions, highlighting the irreplaceability of primary forests. We advocate allowing for natural or passive recovery, especially where biophysical conditions are favourable for spontaneous succession, or too harsh for human‐aided restoration, and choosing a combination of passive and active restoration measures based on adaptive management strategies. Our meta‐analysis provided fundamental insights into bridging the gap between small‐scale experiments and broad‐scale management needs towards highly effective and sustainable forest ecosystem restoration. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Spatio–Temporal Changes of Forests in Northeast China: Insights from Landsat Images and Geospatial Analysis

“…Our Landsat-based results showed that the forests in northeast China decreased by 1051 km 2 , about 42.04 km 2 y −1 during 1990-2015. Despite this decline, northeast China's forest coverage remains 41 percent of total land area, which is higher than China's average of 21.63% [45] and the world's average of 31% [11]. From the perspective of net change in different periods, forest area in northeast China shifted from net loss during 1990-2000 to net gain during 2000-2015 (Table 3).…”

“…In the mountainous area of east Jilin Province, Kuang et al found that forest changes mainly took place in the area with elevation of 300-900 m and slope between 0-11 • during the period 1954-2000 [48]. An estimated two billion ha of forests is degraded worldwide [49], which is largely induced by agricultural expansion and urban sprawl [11,50,51]. It is preferable for cropland to be located in low elevations and on small slopes, for example, 67.4% of the cropland in China was distributed in the area of elevation less than 500 m [52].…”

“…Northeast China has experienced excessive logging and reclamation of forests from 1978 to 1998, which were triggered by both national economic reforms and the broadening of international relations [9]. With the rising awareness of ecological sustainability of forests and its significance to global changes, China launched a series of forest-restoration-related programs; several programs were formally implemented since 1998 in northeast China (Figure 11), for example, the Natural Forest Conservation Program (NFCP), the Three North Shelter Forest System Program (TNSP), the Desertification Control Program, and the Grain-for-Green Program (GFGP) [10,11,64]. The NFCP exhibited a significantly positive relation with forest gain in China [12] and new forests converted from previous cropland were mostly attributed to the Grain-for-Green Program, which aims to return marginal cropland to forest land initiated since 2000 [65].…”

Soil enzyme activity and stoichiometry along a gradient of vegetation restoration at the Karst Critical Zone Observatory in Southwest China

“…Croplands on slopes greater than 25° were abandoned, and vegetative succession allowed to proceed naturally from nonwoody plants to woody shrubs and ultimately to mature secondary forest, with the ultimate objective of ecosystem restoration to conditions similar to pristine primary forest (Xu, Yin, Li, & Liu, ). The regeneration of plant communities under GGP in degraded karst landscapes has been largely successful, indicated by increased NPP and soil organic matter (SOM) stocks, and the stabilization of soil profiles by vegetative canopy cover and roots that moderate further loss by erosion (Chang et al, ; Ren, Lu, Fu, & Zhang, ; Tong et al, ). SOM contains soil organic carbon (C) and nutrients (including nitrogen [N] and phosphorus [P]) and is recognized as a key indicator of soil health and productivity in agricultural systems (Dungait et al, ).…”

Integrating Environmental Variables by Multivariate Ordination enables the Reliable Estimation of Mineland Rehabilitation Status

“…Decision making as well as timely and adequate interventions in complex systems require indicators for tracking the states of a system. The environmental rehabilitation of mining areas, which is intended to restitute ecosystems and their functionality to as close as possible to premining levels to reduce the overall impacts of mining operations (Perring et al, 2013), is affected by a myriad of forces operating at multiple spatiotemporal scales (Arroyo-Rodríguez et al, 2017;Ren et al, 2017). The monitoring of rehabilitation success and the definition of effective indicators of rehabilitation status are necessary for monitoring whether rehabilitation goals are achieved (Gastauer et al, 2018a;Latawiec and Agol, 2016).…”