Ecological and Social Aspects of Ecological Restoration: New Challenges and Opportunities for Northern Regions

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Interest in ecological restoration has recently intensified as scientists, policymakers, and stakeholders use restoration in management strategies to address and mitigate global climate change and biodiversity loss. Northern ecosystems offer special challenges to restoration managers because of their short growing seasons and long recovery periods. This special feature of Ecology and Society on ecological restoration in northern regions draws together 11 papers based on presentations from the conference "Restoring the North", convened in October 2011 in Selfoss, Iceland. We summarize two themes of this conference: (1) setting objectives and evaluating success in restoration, and (2) legislation, policy, and implementation of restoration. We conclude that northern countries altogether comprise a significant knowledge base and suggest five actions to enhance restoration practices within them: (1) improved documentation of restoration actions, including objectives, measures and results, (2) regular evaluation of restoration progress and outcome, (3) coordination of conservation actions among northern countries, including location of restoration actions to sites where they are most useful in a global context, (4) formation of a common platform to strengthen development of research about ecological, political, social, and technical aspects of ecological restoration, and (5) education of new generations of restoration actors who can work in diverse biogeographic settings and cultures.

Incorporating resilience and cost in ecological restoration strategies at landscape scale

“…It depends. We would say that the best solution is focusing on the landscapes with intermediate resilience and low costs; however, the process of setting targets for restoration depends on human values, local demands, political situations, bureaucracy, and institutional arrangements (Rodrigues et al 2009, Faleiro and Loyola 2013, Nilsson and Aradóttir 2013, which make it a context-dependent process.…”

“…In a recent global meta-analysis on the ecological drivers of forest restoration success, Crouzeilles et al (2015) concluded that landscape restoration success is context dependent, but in general, it is influenced by the level of landscape connectivity and historic disturbance. Although there have been significant advances in increasing ecological resilience at a large scale, landscape restoration projects rarely incorporate socioeconomic dimensions despite aspects such as governance, social-political, and financial constraints being key determinants of restoration success (Aronson et al 1993, Rodrigues et al 2009, Nilsson and Aradóttir 2013. Thus, there is an urgent need to include the socioeconomic dimension in large-scale restoration initiatives.…”

A review of methodologies and success indicators for coastal wetland restoration

“…Coastal wetlands are easily blamed by the public as providing breeding ground for mosquitoes that can transmit life-threatening diseases (WHO, 2000;Dale and Knight, 2006). Social attitudes affect the implementation of coastal management and policies (Nilsson and Aradóttir, 2013). For example, worry about health risk brought by mosquitoes constrained the initiative of salt marsh restoration projects, since salt marsh restoration would introduce mosquitos (Adam, 2009).…”

“…This low level of success can be attributed to the limited understanding of wetland functions, as well as some important scientific issues (i.e., the indicator system and the diagnosis of wetland degradation, the dynamic modeling and prediction of wetland degradation, the categories of wetland degradation, the success criteria and models, and the effectiveness of wetland restoration methods) (Xiao et al, 2002;Lv and Liu, 2008). Other factors include poor understanding of their self-designing capacities, the poorly defined success criteria of wetland restoration and the lagged monitoring of restoration projects (Nilsson and Aradóttir, 2013). Moreover, different coastal ecosystems receive disproportional attention.…”

“…Currently, the interest in ecological restoration is strengthened as restoration can mitigate climate change and biodiversity loss (Nilsson and Aradóttir, 2013). Starting in the 1990s, wetland restoration and re-creation became a "hotspot" in the ecological research fields (Thormann and Bayley, 1997;Visser et al, 1999;Zedler and Kercher, 2005).…”