Conceptual and methodological issues in estimating the success of ecological restoration

Marchand Lilian, Castagneyrol Bastien, Jiménez Juan José, Jose M. Rey Benayas, Benot Marie-Lise, Martínez-Ruiz Carolina, Josu G. Alday, Jaunatre Renaud, Dutoit Thierry, Buisson Elise, Mench Michel, Alard Didier, Corcket Emmanuel, Comín Francisco (2021) - Conceptual and methodological issues in estimating the success of ecological restoration - ECOLOGICAL INDICATORS

Ecological restoration (ER) of terrestrial ecosystems has become widespread in past decades. However, assessing its success is complex mainly due to the diversity of objectives pursued, actions undertaken but also statistical methods for treating data. We demonstrate here that, due to the heterogeneity of collected data, the success of restoration actions can be overestimated in meta-analyses. We advocate analyzing distinctly two types of actions in ER, those aiming at increasing an ecosystem attribute (e.g. species richness of a native plant species, ER+), and those aiming at decreasing it (e.g. invasive species cover, ER-). We also suggest that only one index for assessing the success of a restoration action is not enough. We propose here to complete RR (Remaining Recovery) by a novel index informing on ‘what has been restored by comparison to what should have been recovered’: the ‘Achieved Restoration’ index (AR).

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SCI: 

SI

Tipo de Publicación: 

Artículos

ISSN: 

1470-160X

Volumen: 

123

Página Inicial: 

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