Tree regeneration in active and passive cloud forest restoration: Functional groups and timber species

Toledo‐Aceves, Tarin; Trujillo-Miranda, Alma L.; López‐Barrera, Fabiola

doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2021.119050

Cited by 21 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…Our results suggests also that even though sustainable land management as a whole has a positive effect on the amount of local greening, revegetation and tree planting appears to be more effective than natural regeneration. This coincides with other studies, that found a faster recovery of highly degraded land due to active restoration practices such as tree planting compared to more passive methods 46,47 . On the other hand, natural regeneration is, although slower, often much cheaper 48 and can therefore result in the restoration of much larger areas, with a more natural species composition 49 if enough time is available.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Landscape Restoration and Greening in Africa

Ruijsch

Teuling

Verbesselt

et al. 2022

Preprint

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As a reaction to ongoing environmental change, many small-scale land restoration projects have emerged that aim to prevent or reverse land degradation, combat climate change through carbon sequestration or improve the local climate. However, the contribution of these projects to the greening of Africa at larger scales is still unknown due to the absence of a (public) complete database of restoration projects, the lack of monitoring and the low survival rate of planted vegetation. Here, we use climate independent greening time series to detect local greening hotspots in Africa. We find that 3% of Africa experiences local greening, especially in semi-arid environments. On top of that, we show that sustainable land management, especially active revegetation, leads to significant local greening. This study, therefore provides insight in the greening potential of land restoration, which is needed for a thorough understanding of positive and negative effects of sustainable land management.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Landscape Restoration and Greening in Africa

Ruijsch

Teuling

Verbesselt

et al. 2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Natural regeneration does, however, show a significant increase in local greening pixels around a larger area than active revegetation. This coincides with other studies, that found a faster recovery of highly degraded land due to active restoration practices such as tree planting compared to more passive methods [55,56]. On the other hand, natural regeneration is, although slower, often much cheaper [57] and can therefore result in the restoration of much larger areas, with a more natural species composition [58] if enough time is available.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Landscape restoration and greening in Africa

Ruijsch

Teuling

Verbesselt

et al. 2023

Environ. Res. Lett.

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As a reaction to ongoing environmental change, many local land restoration projects have emerged that aim to prevent or reverse land degradation, combat climate change through carbon sequestration or improve the local climate. However, the contribution of these projects to the greening of Africa at larger scales is still unknown due to the absence of a (public) complete database of land restoration projects, the lack of monitoring and the low survival rate of planted vegetation. Here, we use climate independent greening time series to detect local greening hotspots in Africa. We find that 2.1% of Africa, an area of roughly 400000 km2, experiences local greening, especially in semi-arid environments. We show that various forms of sustainable land management lead to significant local greening and demonstrate that some, e.g. active revegetation, are more effective than others, e.g. natural regeneration. This study, therefore, provides a first continental-scale insight in the greening potential of land restoration, which is needed for a thorough understanding of the effectiveness of sustainable land management.

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“…As such, it is important to ensure that there are sufficient adjacent seed sources to restoration interventions, or planted trees with animal-dispersed seeds that attract dispersers (de la Peña-Domene et al, 2013), as this will ultimately impose a major filter on the initial functional composition of tree recruits. Additionally, other studies have noted the importance of including woody species that are slow to recruit in the initial floristic composition of plantings (Toledo-Aceves et al, 2021), such as shade-tolerant species with low SLA (Toledo-Aceves et al, 2022).…”

Section: Implications For Forest Restorationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assisted restoration interventions drive functional recovery of tropical wet forest tree communities

Werden

Zarges

Holl

et al. 2022

Front. For. Glob. Change

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Choosing appropriate forest restoration interventions is challenging. Natural regeneration can rapidly facilitate forest recovery in many situations. However, barriers such as dispersal limitation and competition with non-native species can require assisted restoration approaches to facilitate plant community recovery. We used a study that has directly compared the outcomes of tropical wet forest restoration interventions across 11 replicate sites in southern Costa Rica. Within this framework, we examined the functional recovery trajectories of recruiting tree sapling communities across a gradient of restoration interventions including low (natural regeneration), intermediate (applied nucleation), and high (plantation) initial resource-investment, which we compared to remnant reference forest. We collated leaf and stem functional traits for tree species that comprised the bulk of recruiting saplings, then determined how community-weighted trait means and functional diversity metrics changed over a decade across treatments. Results show that assisted restoration approaches (applied nucleation, plantation) sped the development of more functionally diverse tree communities, more than tripling the functional richness (FRic) of recruiting communities when compared to natural regeneration. However, functional dispersion (i.e., the trait range of dominant species) was equivalent across interventions, and between 28 and 44% lower than remnant forest, indicating that increases in FRic under assisted restoration were driven by species recruiting in low abundances (<10 individuals across treatments). Recruits in assisted restoration treatments also had 10–15% tougher, less-palatable leaves, and leaves were even tougher in reference forest, which could be driven by increasing herbivory pressure along the gradient of interventions. Results show that tracking simple metrics such as species richness can mask a more mechanistic understanding of ecosystem recovery that is elucidated by taking a functional trait-driven approach toward evaluating outcomes. For example, our work identified a paucity of dense-wooded species recruiting across restoration interventions, wood density was 11–13% lower in restoration treatments than reference forests, underscoring such species as prime targets for enrichment planting. Overall, findings suggest that assisted restoration can catalyze the functional recovery of naturally recruiting tree communities in landscapes that are slow to recover naturally and highlight the importance of evaluating how different components of functional diversity shift over time to fully understand restoration outcomes.

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Tree regeneration in active and passive cloud forest restoration: Functional groups and timber species

Cited by 21 publications

References 53 publications

Landscape Restoration and Greening in Africa

Landscape Restoration and Greening in Africa

Landscape restoration and greening in Africa

Assisted restoration interventions drive functional recovery of tropical wet forest tree communities

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