Replanting agricultural landscapes: how well do plants survive after habitat restoration?

Abstract

Landscape-scale habitat restoration has the potential to return ecosystem functions and services and mitigate the loss of native flora and fauna. However, restoration projects rarely monitor the effectiveness of restoration efforts, such as quantifying the establishment success (survival) of the planted species. We monitored a landscape-scale revegetation program in southeastern Australia that planted 5 million plants representing 35 native species over a 4-year period (2012-2015). We assessed the restoration effectiveness across years to evaluate how different lifeforms survived over time and the factors that influenced the differential survival of lifeforms and individual plant species 3 months (spring) and 9 months (after summer) post-planting. Establishment success varied across years with survival lowest in the 2015 planting season. Survival of different lifeforms after summer were associated with site-level variables (e.g. mean maximum temperature, rainfall, and soil type) with survival generally declining due to high temperatures, low rainfall, and for species planted on sandy or saline soils. Maximum temperature, rainfall, and soil type were the most important predictors of compositional change in the 20 species commonly planted across years, with two saltbush species (Atriplex paludosa) and one eucalypt species (Eucalyptus fasciculosa) having the highest survival, while one sedge species (Juncus kraussii) and two grass species (Poa poiformis and Puccinellia stricta) had among the lowest observed survival. These results highlight the importance of monitoring establishment success through survival to detect changes in the composition of lifeforms and species to guide future re-plantings aimed at returning the desired plant diversity.

Evaluating restoration outcomes: trial of a community‐based monitoring protocol

“…On average, survival of plants after the first summer (61%, all species combined) was relatively low compared with other recent studies in south‐eastern Australia (69–94%) (Jellinek et al . 2020b), but higher than some studies in south‐western Australia (53%) (Hallett et al . 2014).…”

“…In comparison, Sweet Bursaria and Drooping Sheoak had low rates of survival across sites: other studies have found these species are commonly affected by grazing (Jellinek et al . 2020b).…”

“…This suggests that in the future, survival of some species in their current environment is likely to be affected by climate change that involves hotter and drier conditions (Jellinek et al . 2020b).…”

“…Monitoring and documenting such outcomes are an important step in assessing the success of planting practices and making improvements over time (Jellinek et al . 2020b). Land managers and community groups who carry out on‐ground planting activities can play a vital role in collecting such monitoring information, if they have the resources to do so (Hobbs 2017).…”

Gene flow between two thick-billed grasswren subspecies with low dispersal creates a genomic pattern of isolation-by-distance

“…Within Australia, habitat loss has been anthropogenically driven by a multitude of processes that has changed the landscape notably since the late 18 th century. These processes include the introduction of invasive species, anthropogenic dispersal of non-local species, redirection/removal of natural water courses, and changes in soil properties due to agricultural practices (Kingsford 2000;Woinarski et al 2015;Jellinek et al 2020;Mallen-Cooper and Zampatti 2020). An alarming proportion of extant species are threatened by habitat loss, and, consequently, have reduced population sizes and limited genetic variation on which selection can act (Saccheri et al 1998;Amos et al 2012).…”