The biodiversity and ecosystem service contributions and trade-offs of forest restoration approaches.

Sixty-five years of forest restoration in Nepal: Lessons learned and way forward

Because industrial agriculture keeps expanding in Southeast Asia at the expense of natural forests and traditional swidden systems, comparing biodiversity and ecosystem services in the traditional forest–swidden agriculture system vs. monocultures is needed to guide decision making on land-use planning. Focusing on tree diversity, soil erosion control, and climate change mitigation through carbon storage, we surveyed vegetation and monitored soil loss in various land-use areas in a northern Bornean agricultural landscape shaped by swidden agriculture, rubber tapping, and logging, where various levels and types of disturbance have created a fine mosaic of vegetation from food crop fields to natural forest. Tree species diversity and ecosystem service production were highest in natural forests. Logged-over forests produced services similar to those of natural forests. Land uses related to the swidden agriculture system largely outperformed oil palm or rubber monocultures in terms of tree species diversity and service production. Natural and logged-over forests should be maintained or managed as integral parts of the swidden system, and landscape multifunctionality should be sustained. Because natural forests host a unique diversity of trees and produce high levels of ecosystem services, targeting carbon stock protection, e.g. through financial mechanisms such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), will synergistically provide benefits for biodiversity and a wide range of other services. However, the way such mechanisms could benefit communities must be carefully evaluated to counter the high opportunity cost of conversion to monocultures that might generate greater income, but would be detrimental to the production of multiple ecosystem services.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Ecological restoration, when implemented effectively and sustainably, contributes to protecting biodiversity; improving human health and wellbeing; increasing food and water security; delivering goods, services, and economic prosperity; and supporting climate change mitigation, resilience, and adaptation. It is a solutions-based approach that engages communities, scientists, policymakers, and land managers to repair ecological damage and rebuild a healthier relationship between people and the rest of nature. When combined with conservation and sustainable use, ecological restoration is the link needed to move local, regional, and global environmental conditions from a state of continued degradation, to one of net positive improvement. The second edition of the International Principles and Standards for the Practice of Ecological Restoration (the Standards) presents a robust framework for restoration projects to achieve intended goals, while addressing challenges including effective design and implementation, accounting for complex ecosystem dynamics (especially in the context of climate change), and navigating trade-offs associated with land management priorities and decisions. The Standards establish eight principles that underpin ecological restoration. Principles 1 and 2 articulate important foundations that guide ecological restoration: effectively engaging a wide range of stakeholders, and fully utilizing available scientific, traditional, and local knowledge, respectively. Principles 3 and 4 summarize the central approach to ecological restoration, by highlighting ecologically appropriate reference ecosystems as the target of restoration and clarifying the imperative for restoration activities to support ecosystem recovery processes. Principle 5 underscores the use of measurable indicators to assess progress toward restoration objectives. Principle 6 lays out the mandate for ecological restoration to seek the highest attainable recovery. Tools are provided to identify the levels of recovery aspired to and to track progress. Principle 7 highlights the importance of restoration at large spatial scales for cumulative gains. Finally, ecological restoration is one of several approaches that address damage to ecosystems and Principle 8 clarifies its relationships to allied approaches on a “Restorative Continuum”. The Standards highlight the role of ecological restoration in connecting social, community, productivity, and sustainability goals. The Standards also provide recommended performance measures for restorative activities for industries, communities, and governments to consider. In addition, the Standards enhance the list of practices and actions that guide practitioners in planning, implementation, and monitoring activities. The leading practices and guidance include discussion on appropriate approaches to site assessment and identification of reference ecosystems, different restoration approaches including natural regeneration, consideration of genetic diversity under climate change, and the role of ecological restoration in global restoration initiatives. This edition also includes an expanded glossary of restoration terminology. SER and its international partners produced the Standards for adoption by communities, industries, governments, educators, and land managers to improve ecological restoration practice across all sectors and in all ecosystems, terrestrial and aquatic. The Standards support development of ecological restoration plans, contracts, consent conditions, and monitoring and auditing criteria. Generic in nature, the Standards framework can be adapted to particular ecosystems, biomes, or landscapes; individual countries; or traditional cultures. The Standards are aspirational and provide tools that are intended to improve outcomes, promote best practices, and deliver net global environmental and social benefits. As the world enters the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030), the Standards provide a blueprint for ensuring ecological restoration achieves its full potential in delivering social and environmental equity and, ultimately, economic benefits and outcomes.

Forest landscape restoration-induced changes in land cover and woody plant community structure in a degraded forest reserve in Ghana

Specific forest restoration aims to maximum ecosystem services (ESs); however, the complex trade-offs among ecosystem services pose considerable challenges for fulfilling such goals. Based on forest restoration on Hainan Island, China, we integrated spatially explicit models of ecosystem services and spatial prioritization techniques based on the efficiency frontier between habitat quality and plantation revenue to analyze the impacts of decision-makers’ preferences on optimal configurations of forest restoration. We then investigated the effects of different optimal restoration schemes on water purification, soil retention, carbon sequestration, and coastal hazard mitigation. Based on our results, plantation revenue and habitat quality exhibited an obvious trade-off during the process of restoration. Forest restoration patterns also varied with the degree of preference for plantation yield or habitat quality, indicating that understanding ecosystem service tradeoffs can support the optimal selection of forest restoration schemes under different preferences. However, when the values of multiple ecosystem services associated with forest restoration were considered (e.g., water purification, soil retention, carbon sequestration, and coastal hazard mitigation), the optimal solution choice varied. Our results suggest the application of the efficiency frontier can deepen quantitative understanding of ecosystem service trade-offs, and the addition of multi-benefit evaluation based on optimal solutions can provide a more detailed and broader picture of forest restoration plans. Integrated efficiency frontier assessment with the valuation of ecosystem services associated with forest restoration provides a quantitative approach for optimal forest restoration, which can be applied in broad forest restoration programs.

Can agroforestry systems enhance biodiversity and ecosystem service provision in agricultural landscapes? A meta-analysis for the Brazilian Atlantic Forest

Forest ecosystems are facing the risk of degradation mainly due to habitat fragmentation and degradation due to human activities. Forests are life supporting systems to human beings. Restoration of tropical forest is a critical task in present era as forest fires and habitat fragmentation are the major issues for forest degradation. Restoration is important to reverse degradation in forest ecosystems. Globally, 2 billion ha land have been identified for restoration of forest. Deforestation accounts for 60% emission of carbon back into the atmosphere which is sequestered by the forest ecosystem. Globally, tropical forests have large biodiversity pools and carbon sinks, and this diversity conservation has a huge effect on climate change mitigation. Forest restoration has become a conservation option to reestablish ecological processes and ecosystem services, as reducing the effects of climate change. The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol is the best option of a restoration approach to curtail CO2 emissions. The Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) approach addresses the ecological integrity and resilience to the climate change issues. The manuscript aims to highlight the new approaches for restoration, ecosystem services and ecological sustainability in forest ecosystem.

Soil erosion control practices in the Chinese Loess Plateau: A systematic review

Mammal species composition and habitat associations in a commercial forest and mixed-plantation landscape

<p>All land uses provide ecosystem services (ES), which have been depleted due to the lack of soil conservation practices along with the intensive use of land for meeting the water-energy-food nexus demand. The economic incentive is a first step towards attracting farmers’ interest in protecting and conserving ES. Farmers, stakeholders, and decision-makers need to understand the value and importance of watershed services through a straightforward cost-effective analysis of conserving and/or protecting them. Economic feasibility affects the volunteer enrolment in payment for ecosystem services (PES) programmes for adopting soil conservation practices in rural areas; nonetheless, it is still poorly understood regarding investments in ES restoration and preservation. There is very little information on the restoration of water provisioning in rural basins that participated in PES programmes. Additionally, most studies focus on programmes for one specific type of landowner, putting aside the plurality of landowners in the basin. It undermines PES programmes implementation when assessing individual preferences and willingness to pay. Thus, we aim to compare costs and benefits from incentivising soil conservation practices and forest restoration in a rural basin through a cost-benefit analysis and quantitative improvements of water provision and soil erosion control; moreover, we will use hydrological and economic-decision models to asses the uncertainties from the relationship between soil conservation practices and watershed services under climate change. The Guariroba River Basin (36,200 ha), located on the rural side of Campo Grande city ‒ Brazil, currently provides 34% of the drinking water demand in the urban area — once provided about 50% — since converting native Cerrado vegetation of the basin for cattle farming has led to a decrease in water provisioning due to soil degradation and, consequently, reservoir siltation. In 2009, the city hall launched a PES Programme called ‘Manancial Vivo’ (MVP). In this context, it is fundamental to understand how uncertainties in the input data, economic models structure, and parameters estimation are consistently integrated into hydro-economic models. By this, we will assess different hydro-economic scenarios of water availability to understand uncertainties and hydrological trade-offs. We expect to respond to some questions: whether the Brazilian PES programme model is environmentally and economically adequate; how water-food-energy insecurity nexus affects PES policies; and what role PES plays in building resilience to water supply systems and helping people to adapt to climate change effects.</p>

Tree plantations and forest restoration are leading strategies for enhancing terrestrial carbon (C) sequestration and mitigating climate change. While it is well established that species-rich natural forests offer superior C sequestering benefits relative to short-rotation commercial monoculture plantations, differences in rates of C capture and storage between longer-lived plantations (commercial or non-commercial) and natural forests remain unclear. Using a natural experiment in the Western Ghats of India, where late-20th century conservation laws prohibited timber extraction from monodominant plantations and natural forests within nature reserves, we assessed forests and plantations for aboveground C storage and the magnitude and temporal stability of rates of photosynthetic C capture (gross primary production). Specifically, we tested the hypothesis that species-rich forests show greater temporal stability of C capture, and are more resistant to drought, than monodominant plantations. Carbon stocks in monodominant teak (Tectona grandis) and Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus spp.) plantations were 30%–50% lower than in natural evergreen forests, but differed little from moist-deciduous forests. Plantations had 4%–9% higher average C capture rates (estimated using the Enhanced Vegetation Index–EVI) than natural forests during wet seasons, but up to 29% lower C capture during dry seasons across the 2000–18 period. In both seasons, the rate of C capture by plantations was less stable across years, and decreased more during drought years (i.e. lower resistance to drought), compared to forests. Thus, even as certain monodominant plantations could match natural forests for C capture and storage potential, plantations are unlikely to match the stability–and hence reliability–of C capture exhibited by forests, particularly in the face of increasing droughts and other climatic perturbations. Promoting natural forest regeneration and/or multi-species native tree plantations instead of plantation monocultures could therefore benefit climate change mitigation efforts, while offering valuable co-benefits for biodiversity conservation and other ecosystem services.

Large‐scale forest loss and degradation have dire consequences for biodiversity maintenance and provision of vital ecosystem services. Despite recent increasing efforts for forest restoration and sustainable management, there have been no comparative studies of biological taxonomy and multiple ecosystem functions to assess the effectiveness of forest restoration programmes, and how they vary through space and time. Here, we provided a quantitative assessment of the recovery of biodiversity and ecosystem functions by forest restoration in China using a meta‐analysis of 172 studies. We found that biodiversity and ecosystem functions were substantially increased in restored forests comparing with the degraded states. However, these restoration effects varied considerably by degradation origin, restoration approach, restoration age, ecological domains, taxonomic group and ecosystem function that is measured. Results also revealed that forest restoration from degraded states could not lead to full recovery of biodiversity and ecosystem functions, highlighting the irreplaceability of primary forests. We advocate allowing for natural or passive recovery, especially where biophysical conditions are favourable for spontaneous succession, or too harsh for human‐aided restoration, and choosing a combination of passive and active restoration measures based on adaptive management strategies. Our meta‐analysis provided fundamental insights into bridging the gap between small‐scale experiments and broad‐scale management needs towards highly effective and sustainable forest ecosystem restoration. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Impacts of forest restoration on soil erosion in the Three Gorges Reservoir area, China

Adapting ecosystem restoration for sustainable development in a changing world

A multi-criteria analysis can be an interesting tool to assess the effects of silvicultural treatments on ecosystem services supply. In the degraded forests, thinning has a positive effect on the provision of ecosystem services such as timber and bioenergy production, climate change mitigation, and recreational attractiveness. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment highlights the importance of the ecosystem services for human well-being and for maintaining conditions for life on Earth. Silvicultural treatments can improve the provision of ecosystem services to increase local communities’ well-being. The aim of this study is to understand the effects of two-forest restoration practices (selective thinning and thinning from below) on three ecosystem services (wood production, climate change mitigation, and recreational opportunities) in an Italian case study. A multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) was performed to compare the effects of three forest restoration scenarios (baseline, selective thinning, thinning from below) on ecosystem services. Wood production was estimated considering the local market prices and the wood volumes harvested, while climate change mitigation was quantified through the C-stock and C-sequestration changes in carbon pools due to the silvicultural treatments. The recreational activities were assessed through a questionnaire survey. A sample of 200 visitors was interviewed face-to-face to estimate the impact of thinning on recreational activities. The results of the MCDA show that the selective thinning scenario is the optimal forest restoration practice to increase the recreational attractiveness and the wood production in the study area. The results concerning the effects of the silvicultural treatments on ecosystem services supply are an important tool to support decision makers.