Abstract
Seedlings are the foundation for many terrestrial ecosystems and are a critical consideration and investment for implementing global forest and landscape restoration programs. Global leaders have pledged to restore millions of hectares during the next decade, necessitating many millions of established plants. Although natural regeneration and direct seeding will likely meet a portion of that need, large quantities of high-quality, nursery-grown seedlings are also required. Insufficient plant quantities or poor-quality plants result in unsuccessful outplanting programs. Such failures have considerable economic and environmental consequences and will result in an inability to meet restoration goals. Nonetheless, the importance of restoration nurseries is often overlooked when making large-scale restoration commitments. Technology already exists to produce high-quality plants to meet a variety of goals. This technology cannot be applied, however, unless adequate resources and training are made available by overcoming political and socioeconomic barriers. In this article, we discuss the important role of nurseries to meet global restoration commitments and review three case studies where increased support to nursery programs resulted in improved restoration success.
Highlights
Plant production requires specialized knowledge and attention to many important factors to be able to deliver adequate quantities of high-quality plants from appropriate genetic seed sources to the land manger in a timely manner. This process relies on the Target Plant Concept (Dumroese et al 2016b; Landis 2011) which starts with a partnership between the client and the nursery manager to focus on putting the best plant materials on specific project sites
Closer attention to detail regarding provenance and seedling quality, higher yield from the nursery, and more educated partners in reforestation should result in longer term increases in the number of hectares effectively planted with locally produced plant material
The aforementioned three case studies highlight how increasing support to nursery programs and sharing best practices across a range of environmental, geopolitical, and economic conditions can lead to increased restoration success
Summary
Tree, shrub, forb, and grass seedlings are the foundation of all healthy forest and terrestrial ecosystems. International leaders have pledged to restore millions of hectares of deforested and degraded lands (Table 1). To help meet these unprecedented and ambitious commitments to forest and landscape restoration, availability of quality nursery seedlings is a crucial consideration (Gregorio et al 2015; Harrison et al 2008). High-quality, nursery-grown plants are often a critical requirement for successfully implementing forest and landscape restoration programs to create healthy, functional, sustainable, and resilient ecosystems. These forests and landscapes provide multiple ecological, social, and economic benefits.
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