Monitoring rewilding from space: The Knepp estate as a case study

Bühne, Henrike Schulte to; Ross, Bethany; Sandom, Christopher J.; Pettorelli, Nathalie

doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.114867

Cited by 13 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…We were thus unable to identify multiple Landsat scenes from different seasons in the same year as achieved by Schulte to Bühne et al. (2022)—but rather identified a single scene from May 2007 (4 years after Alladale changed management priorities) and another from August 2021; see Table S1 for full scene details. This allowed us to assess land cover change over 14 years of the project.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 85%

“…To assess land cover change we replicated the data sources of Schulte to Bühne et al. (2022) as far as possible to enable comparison between our results. Briefly, we used Landsat Collection 2 Tier 1 Surface Reflectance products (georeferenced, terrain‐corrected, atmospherically corrected; and resampled to 30 m resolution) from the United States Geological Survey (USGS).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Active management is required to regenerate the Caledonian forest: Alladale as a case study

Williams,

Sandom,

Pettorelli

2024

Ecol Sol and Evidence

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Passive approaches to nature recovery have been hailed as a low‐cost approach to boosting biodiversity in ecologically degraded sites. But there remains little evidence of whether this generalises to all climatic and ecological contexts. To address this knowledge gap, we used satellite remote sensing to examine vegetation change in Alladale Wilderness Reserve, a remote rewilding site in Scotland where active and passive approaches have simultaneously taken place for the past decades. In contrast to enclosures and tree planting, more passive approaches did not help regenerate the native Caledonian forest, failing to lead to structural or functional change within Alladale, relative to the wider landscape. Observed changes under both approaches were moreover much less dramatic than those reported for the Knepp Estate, another established rewilding site in Southern England. Our results suggest that passive rewilding is unlikely to promote significant biodiversity change in areas where recent human forcing of ecological processes has been limited, even if past human pressures have intensively reshaped the ecosystem—as seen in Alladale. In such situations, active interventions are likely to be required to shift the system onto a new ecological trajectory. Altogether, our study illustrates how freely available satellite data can (1) help contrast the impacts of environmental management approaches on ecosystem structure and functioning, in ways that complement existing ground‐based studies; and (2) help distinguish areas likely to benefit from passive nature recovery approaches from those where specific active interventions are needed.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 85%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Active management is required to regenerate the Caledonian forest: Alladale as a case study

Williams,

Sandom,

Pettorelli

2024

Ecol Sol and Evidence

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“…Similar to land cover and land cover change, the tracking of primary productivity dynamics from space has been the subject of many scientific studies since the launch of the Landsat program, with many satellite‐based vegetation indices, including the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), having been shown to indirectly relate to this key ecosystem process (Pettorelli, 2013). Despite this popularity, few studies have looked at the impacts of rewilding projects, or unintentional rewilding as a result of human land abandonment, on primary productivity dynamics as tracked by NDVI (but see Sikorska et al., 2021; Schulte to Bühne et al., 2022). This is surprising, as rewilding often includes reintroducing or increasing populations of large herbivores, and the remote monitoring of primary productivity dynamics can help assess the impacts of increasing herbivory on vegetation (Navarro et al., 2020).…”

Section: Satellite Remote Sensing and The Monitoring Of Rewilding And...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although related, rewilding is expected to be conceptually different from traditional ecological restoration (du Toit & Pettorelli, 2019), in the sense that rewilding aims at enhancing the functioning of ecosystems, rather than reaching a particular compositional or structural state. As such, the monitoring of rewilding projects and the definition of success are in many respects uncharted territory, as, for example, how to best detect and track changes in ecosystem functioning is still open to debate, with very little experience to draw from (Schulte to Bühne et al., 2022; Torres et al., 2018). Practical and comprehensive guidance on how to monitor the impacts of rewilding efforts has so far been limited, with existing recommendations including (1) adapting guidance from organizations such as IUCN and the Society for Ecological Restoration on how to audit restoration projects, which requires setting up a benchmark and comparing the level of ecosystem integrity between the chosen benchmark and the rewilded site (Torres et al., 2018), and (2) using species distribution models to assess the potential level of colonization by new species (Mata et al., 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Current and future opportunities for satellite remote sensing to inform rewilding

Pettorelli

Bühne

2022

Remote Sens Ecol Conserv

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Rewilding has been suggested as an effective strategy for addressing environmental challenges such as the intertwined biodiversity and climate change crises, but there is little information to guide the monitoring of rewilding projects. Since rewilding focuses on enhancing ecosystem functionality, with no defined endpoint, monitoring strategies used in restoration are often inappropriate, as they typically focus on assessing species composition, or the ecological transition of an ecosystem towards a defined desired state. We here discuss how satellite remote sensing can provide an opportunity to address existing knowledge and data gaps in rewilding science. We first discuss how satellite remote sensing is currently being used to inform rewilding initiatives and highlight current barriers to the adoption of this type of technology by practitioners and scientists involved with rewilding. We then identify opportunities for satellite remote sensing to help address current knowledge gaps in rewilding, including gaining a better understanding of the role of animals in ecosystem functioning; improving the monitoring of landscape‐scale connectivity; and assessing the impacts of rewilding on the conservation status of rewilded sites. Though significant barriers remain to the widespread use of satellite remote sensing to monitor rewilding projects, we argue that decisions on monitoring approaches and priorities need to be part of implementation plans from the start, involving both remote sensing experts and ecologists. Making use of the full potential of satellite remote sensing for rewilding ultimately requires integrating species and ecosystem perspectives at the monitoring, knowledge‐producing and decision‐making levels. Such an integration will require a change in know‐how, necessitating increased inter‐disciplinary interactions and collaborations, as well as conceptual shifts in communities and organizations traditionally involved in biodiversity conservation.

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“…There, however, remain controversies around rewilding, with continuing discussion about what the goals of rewilding are, and how these are best achieved (Jørgensen, 2015; Schulte to Bühne, Pettorelli, et al, 2022). In addition, the literature on rewilding is heavily dominated by essays and opinion pieces, rather than empirical studies (Lorimer et al, 2015), leading to a limited availability of practical experience or hard science to draw from (but see, e.g., Schulte to Bühne, Ross, et al, 2022; Segar et al, 2022). Existing rewilding projects and associated information on changes in ecosystem trajectory tend to be relatively sparse and cover short time periods, with no matching sites acting as comparators or counterfactuals.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Restore or rewild? Implementing complementary approaches to bend the curve on biodiversity loss

Pettorelli

Bullock

2023

Ecol Sol and Evidence

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Biodiversity loss and climate change are arguably the most pressing challenges of our time, each intimately and inextricably linked with human well-being and the future of the living world. These two major environmental crises are fundamentally connected, not only in terms of the driving processes, feedback and mechanistic links, but, critically, also in terms of potential solutions (Pettorelli et al., 2021). Nature recovery, in particular, has gained significant traction in recent years as a solution to jointly address the biodiversity crisis and climate change emergency, with research suggesting that the restoration of the planet's most degraded areas in combination with the protection of biodiversity hotspots could significantly boost carbon sequestration capacity while preventing about 70% of predicted species extinctions (Strassburg et al., 2020). The prominence of nature recovery has been further encouraged by the Bonn Challenge and the United Nations (UN) Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, which aim to spur global actions to prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems.Ecological restoration is a long-standing and highly organised practice with a dedicated international society, clear goals and a great

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Monitoring rewilding from space: The Knepp estate as a case study

Cited by 13 publications

References 29 publications

Active management is required to regenerate the Caledonian forest: Alladale as a case study

Active management is required to regenerate the Caledonian forest: Alladale as a case study

Current and future opportunities for satellite remote sensing to inform rewilding

Restore or rewild? Implementing complementary approaches to bend the curve on biodiversity loss

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