Ecological References
Artists who paint landscapes don’t work in cubicles in office buildings. They depend on natural scenery for inspiration and specific detail. So too with ecological restorationists who necessarily begin with natural references as the basis to conceive and
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Ecological References
Artists who paint landscapes don’t work in cubicles in office buildings. They depend on natural scenery for inspiration and specific detail. So too with ecological restorationists who necessarily begin with natural references as the basis to conceive and formulate their projects. This chapter describes the various kinds of ecological references and how the information they contain can be synthesized into reference models for the preparation of restoration project plans. Later, we relate ecological references to ecosystem trajectories and explore the temporal aspects of ecological references.
Reference Concept An ecological restoration project begins with a representation from nature that guides all aspects of project planning and implementation. That representation is called the ecological reference, and it reveals ecosystem states and indicates what is known about underlying processes. Ideally, information revealed by an ecological reference includes species composition, community structure, physical conditions of the abiotic environment, exchanges of organisms and materials that occur with the surrounding landscape, and anthropogenic influences in semicultural ecosystems. Such biophysical information allows us to reinitiate or accelerate ecological processes that had been arrested or retarded. The ecological reference can assume many forms and can be prepared from both primary and secondary sources of information. Primary sources are actual ecosystems, called reference sites. Written ecological descriptions of reference sites also qualify as primary sources, as long as they contain adequate information for preparing restoration plans. Secondary sources consist of any other information
A.F. Clewell and J. Aronson, Ecological Restoration: Principles, Values, and Structure of an Emerging Profession, The Science and Practice of Ecological Restoration, DOI 10.5822/978-1-59726-323-8_7, © 2013 Andre F. Clewell and James Aronson
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ecological restoration: principles, values, and structure of an emerging profession
that contributes in some way to the description of an ecosystem prior to its impairment. More specifically, an ecological reference may consist of the following: • an ecological description of the ecosystem to be restored before it was impaired • remnants of that same ecosystem that survived impairment • another intact ecosystem of the same type in the general vicinity • a combination of the above elements or their ecological descriptions • any of these choices with additions of secondary information or with modifications specified to accommodate changing or recently altered environmental conditions or constraints • synthesis of secondary information in instances when reference sites or their ecological descriptions are unavailable Preferably, the ecological reference will be assembled into a coherent document called the reference model that synthesizes all of the information that is needed to design and plan an ecological restoration project. The reference for restoring
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