Restoration of living environment based on vegetation ecology: Theory and practice

Abstract

The foundation of ecological restoration is how to preserve biocoenoses (i.e. functional ecosystems) and how to restore and reconstruct them where they were destroyed. One of the most important challenges is the restoration of complex, multilayer forests representing the potential natural vegetation. Native forests have functions in disaster mitigation and environmental protection, as well as providing the basis of existence for local people and maintaining gene pools for the future. Through vegetation surveys in Japan and South‐east Asia, we have established basic principles in vegetation‐ecological restoration of forests. We have been restoring expected disaster‐mitigation and environmental protection forests, as experimental reforestation projects, since the 1970s at more than 750 sites throughout the 3000 km long Japanese Archipelago, and since the 1980s in parts of South‐east Asia, China and South America. The restoration movement has spread from a local activity to a global movement. We aim for the sustainable development of human society through ecological restoration of living environments.