Conceptual and methodological issues in estimating the success of ecological restoration

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 heterogene...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Marchand, Lilian, Castagneyrol, Bastien, Jiménez, Juan J., Rey Benayas, Jose M., Benot, Marie-Lise, Martínez-Ruiz, Carolina, Alday, Josu G., Jaunatre, Renaud, Dutoit, Thierry, Buisson, Elise, Mench, Michel, Alard, Didier, Corcket, Emmanuel, Comin, Francisco
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2021
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Valladolid
Repositorio:UVaDOC. Repositorio Documental de la Universidad de Valladolid
OAI Identifier:oai:uvadoc.uva.es:10324/80233
Acceso en línea:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2021.107362
https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/80233
Access Level:acceso abierto
Descripción
Sumario: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).