Managing Trade‐offs in Landscape Restoration and Revegetation Projects

Abstract

1Landscape restoration projects often have multiple and disparate conservation, resource 2 enhancement and sometimes economic objectives, since projects that seek to meet more than one 3 objective tend to be viewed more positively by funding agencies and the community. The degree 4 to which there are tradeoffs among desired objectives is an important variable for decision-makers, 5 yet this is rarely explicitly considered. In particular, the existence of ecological thresholds has 6 important implications for decision-making at both the project level and the regional level. We 7 develop a model of the possibilities and choices for an agency seeking to achieve two 8 environmental objectives in a region through revegetation of a number of sites. A graphical model 9 of the production possibilities sets for a single revegetation project is developed and different 10 tradeoff relationships are discussed and illustrated. Then the model is used to demonstrate the 11 possibilities for managing all such projects within a region. We show that where there are 12 thresholds in the tradeoff relationship between two objectives, specialization (single-or dominant-13 objective projects) should be considered. This is illustrated using a case study in which 14 revegetation is used to meet avian biodiversity and salinity mitigation objectives. We conclude that 15 where there are sufficient scientific data, explicit consideration of different types of tradeoffs can 16 assist in making decisions about the most efficient mix and type of projects to better achieve a 17 range of objectives within a region. 18 19

A review on trade-off analysis of ecosystem services for sustainable land-use management

“…Similarly, Haines-Yong et al (2012) confirmed a trade-off between the provisioning services ("crop-based production") and regulating services ("habitat diver-sity"). Also, during the process of ecological restoration, which converted the agricultural land back into natural ecosystems, trade-offs can be found among different ecosystem services, such as trade-off between biodiversity and salinity mitigation (Maron and Cockfield, 2008), between carbon sequestration and species conservation , food production (Paterson and Bryan, 2012), and water supply (Chisholm, 2010). While, as humans play a critical role in managing the agroecosystem, political practices, socioeconomic incentives and technological progresses are likely to influence the quantity and quality of ecosystem services, which will further affect the direction of trade-offs (Nelson et al, 2009).…”

Trade-off analyses of multiple ecosystem services by plantations along a precipitation gradient across Loess Plateau landscapes

“…In a broader sense, trade-off also refers to unidirectional changes with uneven paces or rates in ESs. Trade-off analysis is a method used to explore the interactions, trends, and drivers of multiple ESs, which is helpful for an in-depth understanding of the mechanisms and ecosystem dynamics toward the establishment of adaptive management (Rodríguez et al 2006;Maron and Cockfield 2008;Bennett et al 2009;Raudsepp-Hearnea et al 2010). Due to the increased awareness and concern regarding trade-offs among ESs, trade-off analysis has emerged as a new research field in recent years.…”

Restoration planning for climate change mitigation and adaptation in the city of Durban, South Africa

“…The limited restoration resources necessitate the identification of cost effective actions and selection of restoration areas which provide multiple restoration benefits (Crossman and Bryan 2009). Planning of a large-scale restoration project can be a challenging undertaking given multiple habitats with varying degrees of degradation, multiple restoration activity choices and (often competing) priorities for ecological and socio-economic goals to be achieved within limited restoration budgets (Maron and Cockfield 2008;Turpie et al 2008;Brancalion et al 2014;Vogler et al 2015). Socio-economic co-benefits are increasingly recognized in restoration projects, because they influence restoration success (Perring et al 2015).…”