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Restoration and repair of Earth's damaged ecosystems

Given that few ecosystems on the Earth have been unaffected by humans, restoring them holds great promise for stemming the biodiversity crisis and ensuring ecosystem services are provided to humanity. Nonetheless, few studies have documented the recovery of ecosystems globally or the rates at which...

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Autores principales: Jones, Holly P., Jones, Peter C., Barbier, Edward B., Blackburn, Ryan C., Rey Benayas, Jose M., Holl, Karen D., McCrackin, Michelle, Meli, Paula, Montoya, Daniel, Mateos, David Moreno
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5832705/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29491171
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.2577
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author Jones, Holly P.
Jones, Peter C.
Barbier, Edward B.
Blackburn, Ryan C.
Rey Benayas, Jose M.
Holl, Karen D.
McCrackin, Michelle
Meli, Paula
Montoya, Daniel
Mateos, David Moreno
author_facet Jones, Holly P.
Jones, Peter C.
Barbier, Edward B.
Blackburn, Ryan C.
Rey Benayas, Jose M.
Holl, Karen D.
McCrackin, Michelle
Meli, Paula
Montoya, Daniel
Mateos, David Moreno
author_sort Jones, Holly P.
collection PubMed
description Given that few ecosystems on the Earth have been unaffected by humans, restoring them holds great promise for stemming the biodiversity crisis and ensuring ecosystem services are provided to humanity. Nonetheless, few studies have documented the recovery of ecosystems globally or the rates at which ecosystems recover. Even fewer have addressed the added benefit of actively restoring ecosystems versus allowing them to recover without human intervention following the cessation of a disturbance. Our meta-analysis of 400 studies worldwide that document recovery from large-scale disturbances, such as oil spills, agriculture and logging, suggests that though ecosystems are progressing towards recovery following disturbances, they rarely recover completely. This result reinforces conservation of intact ecosystems as a key strategy for protecting biodiversity. Recovery rates slowed down with time since the disturbance ended, suggesting that the final stages of recovery are the most challenging to achieve. Active restoration did not result in faster or more complete recovery than simply ending the disturbances ecosystems face. Our results on the added benefit of restoration must be interpreted cautiously, because few studies directly compared different restoration actions in the same location after the same disturbance. The lack of consistent value added of active restoration following disturbance suggests that passive recovery should be considered as a first option; if recovery is slow, then active restoration actions should be better tailored to overcome specific obstacles to recovery and achieve restoration goals. We call for a more strategic investment of limited restoration resources into innovative collaborative efforts between scientists, local communities and practitioners to develop restoration techniques that are ecologically, economically and socially viable.
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spelling pubmed-58327052018-03-15 Restoration and repair of Earth's damaged ecosystems Jones, Holly P. Jones, Peter C. Barbier, Edward B. Blackburn, Ryan C. Rey Benayas, Jose M. Holl, Karen D. McCrackin, Michelle Meli, Paula Montoya, Daniel Mateos, David Moreno Proc Biol Sci Ecology Given that few ecosystems on the Earth have been unaffected by humans, restoring them holds great promise for stemming the biodiversity crisis and ensuring ecosystem services are provided to humanity. Nonetheless, few studies have documented the recovery of ecosystems globally or the rates at which ecosystems recover. Even fewer have addressed the added benefit of actively restoring ecosystems versus allowing them to recover without human intervention following the cessation of a disturbance. Our meta-analysis of 400 studies worldwide that document recovery from large-scale disturbances, such as oil spills, agriculture and logging, suggests that though ecosystems are progressing towards recovery following disturbances, they rarely recover completely. This result reinforces conservation of intact ecosystems as a key strategy for protecting biodiversity. Recovery rates slowed down with time since the disturbance ended, suggesting that the final stages of recovery are the most challenging to achieve. Active restoration did not result in faster or more complete recovery than simply ending the disturbances ecosystems face. Our results on the added benefit of restoration must be interpreted cautiously, because few studies directly compared different restoration actions in the same location after the same disturbance. The lack of consistent value added of active restoration following disturbance suggests that passive recovery should be considered as a first option; if recovery is slow, then active restoration actions should be better tailored to overcome specific obstacles to recovery and achieve restoration goals. We call for a more strategic investment of limited restoration resources into innovative collaborative efforts between scientists, local communities and practitioners to develop restoration techniques that are ecologically, economically and socially viable. The Royal Society 2018-02-28 2018-02-28 /pmc/articles/PMC5832705/ /pubmed/29491171 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.2577 Text en © 2018 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Ecology
Jones, Holly P.
Jones, Peter C.
Barbier, Edward B.
Blackburn, Ryan C.
Rey Benayas, Jose M.
Holl, Karen D.
McCrackin, Michelle
Meli, Paula
Montoya, Daniel
Mateos, David Moreno
Restoration and repair of Earth's damaged ecosystems
title Restoration and repair of Earth's damaged ecosystems
title_full Restoration and repair of Earth's damaged ecosystems
title_fullStr Restoration and repair of Earth's damaged ecosystems
title_full_unstemmed Restoration and repair of Earth's damaged ecosystems
title_short Restoration and repair of Earth's damaged ecosystems
title_sort restoration and repair of earth's damaged ecosystems
topic Ecology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5832705/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29491171
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.2577
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