Challenges of ecological restoration: Lessons from forests in northern Europe

Halme, Panu; Allen, Katherine A.; Auniņš, Ainārs; Bradshaw, Richard; Brūmelis, Guntis; Čada, Vojtěch; Clear, Jennifer; Eriksson, Anna-Maria; Hannon, Gina E.; Hyvärinen, Esko; Ikauniece, Sandra; Iršėnaitė, Reda; Jonsson, Bengt Gunnar; Junninen, Kaisa; Kareksela, Santtu; Komonen, Atte; Kotiaho, Janne S.; Kouki, Jari; Kuuluvainen, Timo; Mazziotta, Adriano; Mönkkönen, Mikko; Nyholm, Kristiina; Oldén, Anna; Shorohova, Ekaterina; Strange, Niels; Toivanen, Tero; Vanha‐Majamaa, Ilkka; Wallenius, Tuomo; Ylisirniö, Anna-Liisa; Zin, Ewa

doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2013.08.029

Cited by 202 publications

(133 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…Reprinted with kind permission of Wiley © Almost everywhere around the globe, human land use has caused extensive degradation of natural landscapes accompanied with extinctions of species and loss of ecosystem services to an extent that it already poses a threat to the longterm sustainability of humanity itself (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005;Rockström et al 2009;Ellis 2011;. This has caused ecological restoration to be raised to a major strategy for reversing the biodiversity losses and increasing the provision of ecosystem services Halme et al 2013;Wortley et al 2013). The importance of restoration as a fundamental conservation strategy is further highlighted by its entry to the premier transnational political convention according to which 15 % of the degraded ecosystems should be restored by 2020 (Convention on Biological Diversity 2010).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Matthews et al 2009;. The observed relatively slow recovery suggests that there, indeed, is a risk of drawing premature conclusions about the effectiveness of restoration in achieving the recent global expectations laid on restoration (Convention on Biological Diversity 2010; Halme et al 2013;Wortley et al 2013). The development of communities towards the direction opposite to the target composition (Fig.…”

Section: Effect Of Restorationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fighting carbon loss of degraded peatlands by jump-starting ecosystem functioning with ecological restoration

Kareksela

Haapalehto

Juutinen

et al. 2015

Science of The Total Environment

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Esitetään Jyväskylän yliopiston matemaattis-luonnontieteellisen tiedekunnan suostumuksella julkisesti tarkastettavaksi yliopiston vanhassa juhlasalissa S212 maaliskuun 28. päivänä 2014 kello 12.Academic dissertation to be publicly discussed, by permission of the Faculty of Mathematics and Science of the University of Jyväskylä, in building Seminarium, auditorium S212, on March 28, 2014 at 12 o'clock noon. The wide and rapidly increasing human land use has caused extensive degradation of natural landscapes, extinctions of species and loss of ecosystem functions and services. Subsequently, ecological restoration has been raised to a major global strategy for safeguarding ecosystem values. However, concerns have been raised on the real potential of restoration to re-establish ecosystem structures and functions. Here, I studied the effects of ecological restoration on the structure and functions of forestry drained boreal peatland ecosystems in southern Finland. To better understand structural and functional changes, the effects of drainage and restoration on water table level, pore water chemistry and peat chemistry were explored as well. Drainage lowered the water table and induced changes in pore water chemistry and plant community composition. Drainage retarded the accumulation of surface peat and resulted in significant reduction in the sequestration of carbon therein. Re-establishment of water table level and significant recovery of pore water and surface peat chemistry were observed after restoration. Restoration induced the recovery of ecosystem structure i.e. plant community composition towards the target. The recovery was dependent on the within-site degree of ecosystem degradation. The original ecosystem structure was not needed for the re-establishment of important peatland ecosystem functionality in terms of surface peat accumulation. However, a more profound recovery of structure and conditions may be needed for some other functions like surface peat carbon sequestration to recover. Overall, my results are promising from the perspective of restoration. However, they highlight the need for patience in drawing conclusions on the effectiveness of restoration. Practitioners should also be prepared for temporarily increased leaching of nutrients into downstream water courses. UNIVERSITY

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Effect Of Restorationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fighting carbon loss of degraded peatlands by jump-starting ecosystem functioning with ecological restoration

Kareksela

Haapalehto

Juutinen

et al. 2015

Science of The Total Environment

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“…With increased understanding of the relative importance of different disturbance types across the boreal zone, it is now possible to develop practical applications in their integration to forest management (Gromtsev 2002;Kuuluvainen & Aakala 2011;Shorohova et al 2011). So far, NDE has been utilized both in the development of silvicultural systems that better take into account the ecosystem perspective (Hyvärinen et al 2005;Koivula et al 2014;Rodríguez et al 2015;Heikkala et al 2016;Suominen et al 2016), but also as a guide to forest restoration treatments (Kuuluvainen 2002;Similä & Junninen 2012;Halme et al 2013). …”

Section: Disturbance Dynamics Of Natural Forests As a Reference In Fomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In southern Finland, for example, approximately 75% of the forests within currently protected areas have been managed for timber production (Similä & Junninen 2012). To improve the ecological quality of degraded forests, various restoration treatments have been applied during the last decades (Djupström et al 2012;Similä & Junninen 2012;Halme et al 2013;Hekkala et al 2016). Conceptually, the restoration approach in Fennoscandia relies on the natural disturbance paradigm, and aims at emulating natural disturbances in forests subjected to restoration (Kuuluvainen 2002;Halme et al 2013).…”

Section: Forest Restoration In Fennoscandiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological effects of disturbance-based restoration in boreal forests

Pasanen¹

2017

Diss. For.

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The degradation and disappearance of natural ecosystems and habitats -including forestsis one of the most important factors behind the current global decline in biological diversity. Since most of terrestrial biodiversity is found in forests, restoration of these ecosystems or their natural characteristics has been proposed as one of the main strategies to counteract global species loss.In this thesis, I examined the ecological effects of forest restoration in disturbancedriven boreal conditions. The applied restoration methods (prescribed burning; creation of canopy gaps; dead wood restoration) used natural forest disturbances as the reference point. Specifically, I focused on the effects that restoration has on tree species composition, ageclass structure, and the amount and diversity of dead wood in forest ecosystems. In addition to examining the changes in these structural attributes, I investigated dead-wood-associated fungal communities in the restored substrates, and assessed whether dead wood restoration could be used to conserve rare and threatened fungal species.Of the examined restoration treatments, the combination of prescribed burning and the creation of canopy gaps was found to be the most promising measure for the restoration of age-class structure and tree species composition in pine-dominated forests. Dead wood restoration -by artificially creating standing and fallen large-diameter dead trees -clearly enhanced the amount of dead wood in both pine and spruce dominated forests. Although dead wood restoration increased the abundance of fungal species in the examined forests, all aspects of the qualitative variation in dead wood was found to be difficult to restore in the short-term, since the restored dead wood was mainly in the initial stage of decomposition. The use of various restoration treatments (e.g. the creation of both standing and fallen dead wood) can compensate for some of the missing variation in fungal communities in the restored substrates.Based on my results, disturbance-based restoration produces promising results by the rapid re-introduction of some of the most important structural attributes that have been lost from forests previously managed for timber production. Although the findings in this thesis show the clear positive effects that restoration has on the re-creation of naturally occurring forest characteristics, it appears difficult to restore all the inherent variability of natural forests. A particular challenge originates from the extended time scale of the natural processes, which have created and maintained the full array of ecological structures in forests, including the generally slow processes of stand succession and wood decomposition. To build a more comprehensive understanding of the potential of forest restoration for the conservation of endangered forest-associated species, a substantially longer monitoring period of restored forests would be useful in future studies.

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“…They exist as urban brownfields and grasslands Klaus 2013), as abandoned agricultural landscapes (Cramer and Hobbs 2007), as cultural artefacts within these landscapes (Collier 2013), as afforested areas (Halme et al 2013), and as maritime regions (Gomes 2013;Graham et al 2014). Their pervasiveness derives from land use change, none of the drivers of which are specifically new to this planet (Jackson 2013).…”

Section: Novel Ecosystems and Social-ecological Resilience Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Novel ecosystems and social-ecological resilience

Collier

2015

Landscape Ecol

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Challenges of ecological restoration: Lessons from forests in northern Europe

Cited by 202 publications

References 69 publications

Fighting carbon loss of degraded peatlands by jump-starting ecosystem functioning with ecological restoration

Fighting carbon loss of degraded peatlands by jump-starting ecosystem functioning with ecological restoration

Ecological effects of disturbance-based restoration in boreal forests

Novel ecosystems and social-ecological resilience

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