The added value of the long-term ecological research network to upscale restoration in Europe

Abstract

Achieving global restoration targets poses challenges including the need for long-term research and effective monitoring of success, fostering collaborations across diverse fields and actors, ensuring the availability of suitable reference ecosystems, and securing sustained funding. Yet, these conditions are often lacking, limiting the effectiveness of restoration. We provide an overview of ecological restoration practices in the pan-European region of the Long-term Ecological Research Network (eLTER) and demonstrate the importance of eLTER and its potential contributions to support the implementation of the EU Nature Restoration Law. We developed an online questionnaire to collect information on eLTER restoration experts and restoration projects details including the use of eLTER contributions (e.g. infrastructure, data and knowledge), between November 2021 and March 2022. We identified 62 restoration experts and 42 restoration projects from 18 countries. Our results show that eLTER restoration expertise covers most of the European habitats, diverse degradation states and restoration techniques. Most restoration projects (78%) involved long-term monitoring exceeding the average project lifespan, which has proven necessary to achieve restoration success. No common protocol was used for monitoring and evaluation or cost-benefit estimates, but respondents reported effective projects, mostly financed from national funds, and benefits in five ecosystem services on average covered per project. Key eLTER contributions included providing reference ecosystems, biotic and abiotic background data, and interdisciplinary discussion or stakeholder management. Ecological restoration is time intensive and requires long-term research and monitoring standardization to fully understand the restoration process and to ensure comparability across ecosystems. The eLTER network can help address these challenges providing added-value contributions through its infrastructure, long-term datasets, diversity of expertise and strategies that can help identify best restoration practices and support the EU Nature Restoration Law. Finally, additional and long-term funding from the EU and the private sector is needed to achieve global larger-scale restoration targets.