Journal of Ecology and Conservation

Restoration Ecology

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Restoration ecology is concerned with restoring and rejuvenating degraded or damaged ecosystems. The aim is to restore ecosystems to health and functionality, usually through active management like reforestation, wetland restoration, or invasive species removal. Restoration efforts assist in the recovery of biodiversity, ecosystem services such as water filtration and carbon sequestration, and habitat provision for wildlife. It also aids in the resilience of ecosystems against environmental change, including climate change.

There are numerous justifications for restoring ecosystems.  Among them are:

• Restoring natural resources, such wildlife populations or potable water
• Repairing the damage to the environment
• Assisting ecosystem-based adaptation, which helps human populations and the ecosystems they depend on adjust to the effects of climate change.
• Reducing the effects of climate change (for example, by sequestering carbon)
• Controlled harvesting and use, especially for subsistence
• Indigenous people's cultural significance
• The local population's environmental health

 

Through initiatives like afforestation, ecosystem restoration can help slow down the effects of climate change.  However, when it comes to tree-planting programs in tropical savannas, afforestation can have detrimental effects on biodiversity.  Afforestation's effects on water supply and quality are also up for debate and differ depending on the area, climate, and age of the projects.  Carbon offsetting from forestry is contentious and occasionally criticized as carbon colonialism.

Numerous ecological ideas are included into ecological restoration.

Disturbance

A disturbance is a shift in the environment that interferes with an ecosystem's ability to function. Many groups naturally experience disturbance on a range of time and spatial scales. For instance, fire is used as a natural disturbance regime in many forest and grassland restoration projects.

Succession

The process through which a community evolves over time, particularly after a disruption, is known as ecological succession. An ecosystem will frequently go from a simple level of organization with a few dominant pioneer species to a community with numerous interdependent species that is progressively complex. Depending on how severe the disturbance was, restoration frequently involves starting, supporting, or speeding up ecological successional processes.

Fragmentation

A biological system's spatial discontinuities, where ecosystems are divided into smaller sections by natural disturbance and changes in land use (such as agriculture), are referred to as habitat fragmentation. As a result, the population size decreases and the level of isolation rises.

Ecosystem function

The fundamental and fundamental underlying processes of all natural systems, such as energy fluxes and nutrient cycles, are referred to as ecosystem function. Addressing any ecological processes that might be deteriorated requires an awareness of how intricate these ecosystem activities are.

Population genetics

It has been demonstrated that genetic variety is just as crucial to the restoration of ecosystem processes as species diversity.  Therefore, genetic processes are being included into management strategies more and more in ecological restorations.  In restored populations, founder effects, inbreeding depression, outbreeding depression, genetic drift, maladaptation, and gene flow are all population genetic processes that should be taken into account.