Influencing Landscape-Scale Revegetation Trajectories through Restoration Interventions

Catterall, Carla

doi:10.1007/s40823-020-00058-5

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 90 publications

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“…Fifth, we also acknowledge that planting may not always be necessary to reinstate vegetation. Alternative approaches include unassisted (passive) regeneration and various other types of potentially lower cost interventions (Catterall 2020). An initial strategy to first observe levels of unassisted vegetation recovery (e.g.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Pouzols et al (2012) explicitly incorporated uncertainty and time lags into restoration planning models to provide more realistic solutions than assuming instantaneous outcomes from a once-off allocation of funds. However, for landscape-scale restoration planning, it remains a significant challenge to incorporate variation among sites in both the legacies of past environmental degradation and the likely future trajectories of both costs and outcomes (Catterall 2020). There is a need to incorporate practicalities of annual budget allocations and variation in the utility of different restoration techniques through time (Knight andCowling 2007, McDonald-Madden et al 2008), and to match planned restoration interventions to the type and initial quality of vegetation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Smart allocation of restoration funds over space and time

Shoo

Catterall

Beyer

et al. 2021

Ecological Applications

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A challenge for natural area managers is to ensure that public expenditure on land restoration is cost effective, efficient and transparent but this is difficult to achieve in practice, especially when there are many possible projects across multiple years. Here we develop a “roadmap” for investment in land restoration. It explicitly considers space, time and their interaction, in relation to ecological outcomes and restoration costs (and their variation in time and space). Using integer linear programming optimization in a benefit‐cost accounting framework, the roadmap incorporates: transitions between different stages of ecological recovery in a spatial mosaic of multiple ecosystem types; cost schedules associated with managing those transitions over time; time lags between beginning management and achieving outcomes; variations to constraints and goals associated with various factors including site accessibility, specific conservation priorities (such as threatened species or ecosystems); and background environmental trends. This approach enables land managers to: (1) forecast landscape‐scale outcomes of management strategies over long timeframes; (2) address the question of how long it will take and how much it will cost to achieve specific outcomes; and (3) explore potential trade‐offs in outcomes among alternative management strategies. We illustrate its application using a case study of forest restoration in Australia by a local government authority across a public conservation estate comprising 765 land units of varying size, totaling ˜13,000 ha, across five different floristic vegetation types, with an annual budget of ˜AU$5M, projected over a 50‐yr timeframe. These simulations revealed a trade‐off between management strategies that seek to increase either the total cover of native forest or the amount of high quality forest: quality‐based strategies were favored in scenarios in which shorter term (20–30 yr) timeframes were chosen at the outset, but cover‐based strategies were favored if longer time horizons were initially targeted. Projected outcomes were also strongly influenced by assumed background rates of vegetation decline or recovery. Many of the issues in this restoration roadmap are generalizable (even though specific outcomes and trade‐offs are likely to vary among case studies), and the approach is both scalable and transferable to other regions and ecosystems.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Smart allocation of restoration funds over space and time

Shoo

Catterall

Beyer

et al. 2021

Ecological Applications

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“…As we have discussed in detail previously (Reid & Holl, 2013), demonstrating that restoration strategies attract animals into restoration sites and disperse seeds is not sufficient evidence that these strategies actually accelerate vegetation recovery, due to the many other potential barriers to seedling establishment once the seeds arrive. These barriers include high levels of seed predation, failure of seeds to germinate and low seedling survival and growth due to herbivory, pathogens, stressful microclimatic conditions and lack of soil nutrients (Catterall, 2020; Holl, 2012). Indeed, many past studies show that bird perches and bat roost boxes increase faunal activity and seed dispersal but do not enhance seedling establishment (e.g.…”

Section: Monitoring Vegetation Recovery Is Essential To Demonstrate R...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Bonn Challenge, UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030)). Past studies show that lack of dispersal of forest seeds is a primary factor limiting the rate of tropical forest recovery, although several other factors, such as competition with aggressive grasses and ferns, seed predation and herbivory, and stressful microclimatic conditions also limit seedling recruitment and growth (Catterall, 2020; Holl, 2012). Silva et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Alluring restoration strategies to attract seed‐dispersing animals need more rigorous testing

Holl

Joyce

Reid

2022

Journal of Applied Ecology

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In a recently published paper, Silva et al. conclude that placing fruit feeders (induced seed dispersal) in restored tropical forests serves to enrich the diversity of animal species and seeds in recovering forests and therefore is a cost‐effective tropical forest restoration strategy. We argue that due to poor experimental design and choice of response variables measured, the data presented do not provide rigorous support that induced seed dispersal enhances tropical forest recovery. The authors present data on animal visitation to two fruit feeders in a single 7‐year old restoration site in the Brazilian Atlantic forest over a 2‐year period. Their study has no replication and lacks no‐intervention controls with which to compare the effect of this restoration strategy. These experimental design shortcomings prevent them from demonstrating the efficacy of fruit feeders for attracting animals or enriching vegetation recovery. Like many faunal attraction studies, Silva et al. (2020) do not present any data on seedling recruitment; such data are needed to demonstrate that restoration strategies enhance vegetation recovery. Nor do they provide cost estimates for induced seed dispersal as compared to other empirically supported restoration strategies. Synthesis and applications. Promoting enticing restoration methods to attract animals into a restoration site without rigorous data to support the value added of such strategies for enhancing faunal abundance and forest vegetation recruitment has the potential to misguide the investments of scarce restoration resources. We recommend standards for evaluating novel restoration methods to determine whether they are cost‐effective approaches to include in the diverse toolbox needed to meet ambitious global forest restoration targets.

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“…The potential of large scale tree planting to achieve restoration has been critically examined (Holl and Brancalion, 2020) and often considered costly and labor intensive, with low survival rates common where environmental constraints such as moisture and temperature are coupled with uncontrolled livestock grazing that damage young, unprotected seedlings. Restoration techniques based on natural regeneration are less costly than tree planting making them a viable alternative for restoring degraded lands although success is likely to depend on the extent of soil degradation and the presence of forest vegetation in the vicinity (Chazdon and Guariguata, 2016;Catterall, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Opportunities and Constraints for Using Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration for Land Restoration in Sub-Saharan Africa

Chomba

Sinclair

Savadogo³

et al. 2020

Front. For. Glob. Change

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Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) comprises a set of practices used by farmers to encourage the growth of native trees on agricultural land. FMNR is reported to deliver a number of positive impacts, including increasing agricultural productivity through soil fertility improvement and feed for livestock, incomes, and other environmental benefits. It is widely promoted in Africa as a cost-effective way of restoring degraded land, that overcomes the challenge of low survival rates associated with tree planting in arid and semi-arid areas. Despite being widely promoted, the evidence for these bold claims about FMNR has not been systematically analyzed. This paper reviews the scientific evidence related to the contexts in which FMNR is practiced across sub-Saharan Africa, how this influences the composition of regenerating vegetation, and the resulting environmental and socioeconomic benefits derived from it. This reveals that quantitative evidence on FMNR outcomes is sparse and mainly related to experience in the Maradi and Zinder regions of Niger. There is little mechanistic understanding relating how context conditions the diversity and abundance of regenerating trees and how this in turn is related to ecosystem function and livelihood benefits. This makes it difficult to determine where and for whom FMNR is an appropriate restoration technique and where it might be necessary to combine it with enrichment planting. Given the need for viable restoration practices for agricultural land across Africa, well beyond the climatic and edaphic contexts covered by existing FMNR studies, we recommend research combining functional ecology and socioeconomic assessments, embedded as colearning components within scaling up initiatives. This would fill key knowledge gaps, enabling the development of context-sensitive advice on where and how to promote FMNR, as well as the calculation of the return on investment of doing so.

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Influencing Landscape-Scale Revegetation Trajectories through Restoration Interventions

Cited by 6 publications

References 90 publications

Smart allocation of restoration funds over space and time

Smart allocation of restoration funds over space and time

Alluring restoration strategies to attract seed‐dispersing animals need more rigorous testing

Opportunities and Constraints for Using Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration for Land Restoration in Sub-Saharan Africa

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