The relative effectiveness of seed addition methods for restoring or re-creating species rich grasslands: a systematic review protocol

Abstract

Background: Extensively managed grasslands in temperate biomes are capable of harboring a big variety of plant and invertebrate species. Yet, they have suffered from a strong decline in the past decades mainly due to agricultural intensification. Agri-environment schemes have been introduced in Europe in order to promote farmland biodiversity, but they were only little effective, especially so in grasslands. Not surprisingly, grassland restoration and recreation through active seed addition has thus gained in importance in the recent years. The most common methods used rely either on the addition of commercial seed mixes, on the addition of seeds collected from a speciose donor grassland or on transferring hay from a speciose donor grassland after the soil of the receiver site has been prepared (ploughing, harrowing or topsoil removal). While there is evidence that these restoration methods may contribute to improve the biodiversity of grasslands, especially plant diversity, their relative effectiveness remains poorly known. The aim of this systematic review is to scrutinize the peer-reviewed literature for scientific evidence about comparative effectiveness. Methods: We will search for peer-reviewed journal articles in bibliographic databases and grey literature in search engines and organizational websites dealing with at least one of the above mentioned seed addition methods. We will only include studies which were carried out in temperate Europe. Through a scoping exercise a search string was developed which was based on a previously prepared test-list. The search string was then tested for validity with two independent reference lists. Screening will be done on the title, abstract and full-text level and consistency checking will be done on a random subsample by a second reviewer. After critically appraising internal validity of the retained studies, data on the responses of plants and invertebrates as well as all relevant meta-data will be extracted and coded. A meta-analysis will be conducted on studies with high internal validity whereas a narrative analysis will be done with descriptive statistics on studies with medium internal validity. Potential effect modifiers like study duration, former land use or local climate will be included in the analysis as moderators.

Grasslands and savannahs in the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

“…Furthermore, increased climate variability will bring new challenges to restoration in many places, increasing the need for adaptive approaches (Falk & Millar 2016 (Galvin 2009), frequently using knowledge from traditional and indigenous communities (Selemani et al 2012). Direct seedling (Bissett 2006;Sampaio et al 2019), enhancement planting (Slodowicz et al 2019), and, in arid areas, the use of irrigation are all employed to speed up the process and to replace species that have disappeared from the seed pool. The interplay between the use and timing of managed grazing and grazing exclusion in grassland restoration is still being worked out in many ecosystems (e.g.…”

Biochar’s effect on the ecosystem services provided by sandy-textured and contaminated sandy soils: a systematic review protocol

“…Google searches can be broad and return many results for every search, both related and unrelated to the review objective. For that reason, in our review study we will download the first 1000 results returned by Google scholar [50] using Publish or Perish software [51] as also done, for example, by other systematic reviews in Environmental Evidence [52,53]. The software will assist in retrieving relevant articles to add to the reference list in Endnote.…”

The power of data synthesis to shape the future of the restoration community and capacity

“…To date, there have been several powerful and informative meta‐analyses and syntheses covering many aspects, systems, responses, and spatial and temporal scales in restoration (Jones & Schmitz 2009; Rey Benayas et al 2009; Crouzeilles et al 2016; Kollmann et al 2016; Jones et al 2018; Prach & Walker 2019) with more planned (Slodowicz et al 2019). Meta‐analysis can offer two powerful outcomes to science: to assess evidence for the effectiveness of particular interventions or hypothesized causal associations for a condition, or to reach broad generalizations to provide a more comprehensive picture than can be obtained from an individual study (Gerstner et al 2017; Gurevitch et al 2018).…”