Two billion ha have been identified globally for forest restoration. Our meta-analysis encompassing 221 study landscapes worldwide reveals forest restoration enhances biodiversity by 15–84% and vegetation structure by 36–77%, compared with degraded ecosystems. For the first time, we identify the main ecological drivers of forest restoration success (defined as a return to a reference condition, that is, old-growth forest) at both the local and landscape scale. These are as follows: the time elapsed since restoration began, disturbance type and landscape context. The time elapsed since restoration began strongly drives restoration success in secondary forests, but not in selectively logged forests (which are more ecologically similar to reference systems). Landscape restoration will be most successful when previous disturbance is less intensive and habitat is less fragmented in the landscape. Restoration does not result in full recovery of biodiversity and vegetation structure, but can complement old-growth forests if there is sufficient time for ecological succession.

Biodiversity offsets are seen as a policy mechanism to balance development and conservation goals. Many offset schemes employ habitat restoration in one area to recreate biodiversity value that is destroyed elsewhere, assuming that recovery is timely and predictable. Recent research has challenged these assumptions on the grounds that restoration implies long time delays and a low certainty of success. To investigate these assertions, and to assess the strength of empirical support for offset policy, we used a meta-analytic approach to analyze data from 108 comparative studies of secondary growth (SG) and old-growth (OG) habitat (a total of 1228 SG sites and 716 OG reference sites). We extracted species checklists and calculated standardized response ratios for species richness, Fisher's alpha, Sorenson similarity, and Morisita-Horn similarity. We modeled diversity change with habitat age using generalized linear models and multi-model averaging, correcting for a number of potential explanatory variables. We tested whether (1) diversity of passively and actively restored habitat converges to OG values over time, (2) active restoration significantly accelerates this process, and (3) current offset policies are appropriate to the predicted uncertainties and time lags associated with restoration. The results indicate that in the best case, species richness converges to OG reference values within a century, species similarity (Sorenson) takes about twice as long, and assemblage composition (Morisita-Horn) up to an order of magnitude longer (hundreds to thousands of years). Active restoration significantly accelerates the process for all indices, but the inherently large time lags, uncertainty, and risk of restoration failure require offset ratios that far exceed what is currently applied in practice. Restoration offset policy therefore leads to a net loss of biodiversity, and represents an inappropriate use of the otherwise valuable tool of ecosystem restoration.

Lysenko 91,92 | Armin Macanović 93 | Parastoo Mahdavi 94 | Peter Manning 35 | Corrado Marcenò 13 | Vassiliy Martynenko 95 | Maurizio Mencuccini 96 | Vanessa Minden 97 | Jesper Erenskjold Moeslund 54 | Marco Moretti 98 | Jonas V. Müller 99 | Abstract Aims: Vegetation-plot records provide information on the presence and cover or abundance of plants co-occurring in the same community. Vegetation-plot data are spread across research groups, environmental agencies and biodiversity research centers and, thus, are rarely accessible at continental or global scales. Here we present the sPlot database, which collates vegetation plots worldwide to allow for the exploration of global patterns in taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity at the plant community level.Results: sPlot version 2.1 contains records from 1,121,244 vegetation plots, which comprise 23,586,216 records of plant species and their relative cover or abundance in plots collected worldwide between 1885 and 2015. We complemented the information for each plot by retrieving climate and soil conditions and the biogeographic context (e.g., biomes) from external sources, and by calculating community-weighted means and variances of traits using gap-filled data from the global plant trait database TRY. Moreover, we created a phylogenetic tree for 50,167 out of the 54,519 species identified in the plots. We present the first maps of global patterns of community richness and community-weighted means of key traits. Conclusions: The availability of vegetation plot data in sPlot offers new avenues for vegetation analysis at the global scale. K E Y W O R D S biodiversity, community ecology, ecoinformatics, functional diversity, global scale, macroecology, phylogenetic diversity, plot database, sPlot, taxonomic diversity, vascular plant, vegetation relevé 166 |

Halting current rates of biodiversity loss will be a defining challenge of the 21st century. To assess the effectiveness of strategies to achieve this goal, indicators and tools are required that monitor the driving forces of biodiversity loss, the changing state of biodiversity, and evaluate the effectiveness of policy responses. Here, we review the use of indicators and approaches to model biodiversity loss in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), a methodology used to evaluate the cradle-to-grave environmental impacts of products. We find serious conceptual shortcomings in the way models are constructed, with scale considerations largely absent. Further, there is a disproportionate focus on indicators that reflect changes in compositional aspects of biodiversity, mainly changes in species richness. Functional and structural attributes of biodiversity are largely neglected. Taxonomic and geographic coverage remains problematic, with the majority of models restricted to one or a few taxonomic groups and geographic regions. On a more general level, three of the five drivers of biodiversity loss as identified by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment are represented in current impact categories (habitat change, climate change and pollution), while two are missing (invasive species and overexploitation). However, methods across all drivers can be greatly improved. We discuss these issues and make recommendations for future research to better reflect biodiversity loss in LCA.

Land use is one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss. However, many life cycle assessment studies do not yet assess this effect because of the lack of reliable and operational methods. Here, we present an approach to modeling the impacts of regional land use on plants, mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles. Our global analysis calculates the total potential damage caused by all land uses within each WWF ecoregion and allocates this total damage to different types of land use per ecoregion. We use an adapted (matrix-calibrated) species-area relationship to model the potential regional extinction of nonendemic species caused by reversible land use and land use change impacts. The potential global extinction of endemic species is used to assess irreversible, permanent impacts. Model uncertainty is assessed using Monte Carlo simulations. The impacts of land use on biodiversity varied strongly across ecoregions, showing the highest values in regions where most natural habitat had been converted in the past. The approach is thus retrospective and was able to highlight the impacts in highly disturbed regions. However, we also illustrate how it can be applied to prospective assessments using scenarios of future land use. Uncertainties, modeling choices, and validity are discussed.