Influencing Landscape-Scale Revegetation Trajectories through Restoration Interventions
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NTERFACE OF LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY AND CONSERVATION BIOLOGY (J WATLING, SECTION EDITOR)
Influencing Landscape-Scale Revegetation Trajectories through Restoration Interventions Carla P. Catterall 1
# Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Purpose of Review This review focuses on potential approaches to restoring vegetation across former agricultural land, mainly considering the relatively well-studied case of once-forested landscapes. It presents an ecological framework within which the potential consequences of different practical interventions are described and compared, and then identifies implications for restoration decision-making. Recent Findings There is a still-growing range of restoration interventions other than high-cost intensive tree-planting. These aim to accelerate vegetation recovery at different stages of forest redevelopment, by removing factors that would otherwise have an inhibitory influence. Potential interventions include adding seed, installing structures to attract seed dispersers, selectively protecting or removing different vegetation elements (trees or ground plants) in the regenerating communities, and managing fire, livestock grazing or wildlife. Summary Given the potential variety of approaches, at a landscape scale, the best solution is most likely a spatial mosaic that tailors specific restoration interventions to differing contexts and outcomes. However, the current evidence base is insufficient to adequately guide decisions about how to match method to site, landscape and cost. Research has typically been small-scale and often disconnected from restoration practice. Larger-scale investment in collaborative and innovative restoration trials and experiments is needed to enable better decision-making. Keywords Regeneration . Succession . Forest . Ecosystem . Oldfield
Introduction The advent of the Anthropocene epoch has seen the emergence of rapid and unprecedented industrial-scale destruction of native vegetation, and its conversion for human use. There has also been a growing realization of the widespread environmental impacts of large-scale land clearing and of the need to rapidly restore quasi-natural ecological communities at landscape and regional scales [1–7]. Large-scale return of forest to formerly cleared and cultivated land has several precedents in human history. For example, a recent review This article is part of the Topical Collection on Interface of Landscape Ecology and Conservation Biology * Carla P. Catterall [email protected] 1
Environmental Futures Research Institute, Griffith University, Nathan, QLD 4111, Australia
estimated that 56 million hectares of formerly cultivated land in the Americas regenerated to native forest in the 1500s, following decimation of indigenous peoples after European invasion [8]. Similarly, detailed historical reconstruction of changes after European settlement [9] showed that agricultural use in Massachusetts’ landscape peaked in the mid-1800s (with about 50% of land converted), but that much of this land had become re
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