Introduction
Landscape Restoration

What Is Ecological Restoration?
Definition by the Society of Ecological
Restoration
“Ecological restoration is the process of assisting the recovery and management of ecological integrity .
“Ecological integrity includes a critical range of variability in biodiversity, ecological processes and structures, regional and historical context, and sustainable cultural practices .”

What Is Ecological Restoration?
“Restoration of an ecosystem is an acid test of ecological understanding , a technique for basic ecological
research” (Bradshaw)
“Restoration is the central challenge of ecology, gives ecology a mission (to heal the system) and links it
decisively to the land ethic” (Jordan)

History of Restoration Ecology
1930’s UW Arboretum / Aldo Leopold
1940’s prescribed burning experiments in
Wisconsin
1981 Journal: Restoration and Management
Notes
1988 Society for Restoration Ecology founded
1993 Journal: Restoration Ecology
1997 Aldo Leopold Chair in Restoration Ecology established at UW-Madison / Joy Zedler

What Is Landscape Restoration?
Society of Ecological Restoration’s environmental policy on Landscape Integration
“The Society for Ecological Restoration advocates the integration of restoration projects into regional landscapes , so as to maximize the effectiveness of restoration efforts.
“To that end, ecological restoration projects should contribute as much as possible to the establishment of greenbelts, buffers, wildlife corridors , biosphere reserves, and similar conservation lands.”

When Is Landscape Restoration
Relevant to Landscape Ecology?
My answer:
When we seek to reconnect landscapes and restore the flow of information, energy, matter across landscapes.
When an awareness of spatial configuration and spatial and temporal scales is critical to the restoration of landscapes.
When the tools we have developed - particularly landscape models - can provide valuable information about the potential or consequences of landscape restoration.

When Is Landscape Restoration
Relevant to Landscape Ecology?
My answer:
Restoration is one of the best opportunities to test landscape ecological theories!

Landscape Restoration:
Restoration of What?
Restoration of landscape processes and patterns:
Restoration of disturbance regimes
Restoration of cultural landscapes recognizing humans as an important landscape process
Restoration of connections between landscape fragments
Other?

Examples of
Landscape Restoration

Landscape Restoration
Example: Everglades
2.8 Mha wetland complex w/ 1.2
Mha in
Everglades
Original (ca. 1900) Everglades:
Water flowed from Lake
Okeechobee
Through the River of Grass - a slow moving sheet flow of water.
Fed into the Everglades

Landscape Restoration
Example: Everglades
Current Everglades:
Over 50% of original ecosystem has been developed or drained for agriculture or flood control.
The remainder carved into less connected compartments
Sheet flow blocked and redirected by 1,700 miles of levees and canals.
Remaining flow into Everglades highly polluted by nutrients.

Landscape Restoration
Example: Everglades
“We propose that large-scale ecosystem
restoration requires an approach different from those … frequently applied on a smaller scale, and thus the emphasis on restoring ecosystem driving forces rather than on wetland creation, supplemental planting, or revegetation.”
Davis, S. M. and J. C. Ogden. 1994. Everglades
- The ecosystem and its restoration

Landscape Restoration
Example: Everglades
Goal: Restore or mimic the natural flow patterns, both within and among years
Goal: Increase water supplies and maintain flood control.
Plan: Build new reservoirs, underground wells, and artificial wetlands.
Estimated cost of $8
Billion over 20 years

Everglades Restoration
Tools: Everglades Landscape Model (ELM)
Spatially explicit implementation of GEM in the Everglades/Big Cypress region
Horizontal fluxes of water and nutrients in raster landscape, canal vectors
Habitat switching in response to hydroperiod, nutrient levels, and fire
Scenario analyses of landscape response to changes to water quality/quantity management
More info: http://www.sfwmd.gov/org/wrp
/elm/

Landscape Restoration Example:
Yellowstone-to-Yukon
Both restoration and a conservation initiative.
Preserve and create corridors for the movement migration of large mammals - elk, cougars, and grizzly bears.

Landscape Restoration
Yellowstone-to-Yukon
Priority:
Identify potential corridors connecting large, intact ecosystems.
Use GIS analysis to find best corridor locations given ownership, development, etc.

Landscape Restoration
Example: Cultural Restoration
Lowland Heathland Restoration
One of the oldest habitats in the UK, established
4-6000 years ago when people cleared the wildwood.
Its continuation as an open habitat is the result of grazing, firewood and turf cutting.
Lowland heathland supports a large number of specialized species that are of high biodiversity importance, and in many cases are unique to the habitat.
Changes in the rural economy caused mid 20th
C heathland decline, leading to encroachment by tree scrub, bracken and grasses , which are given a competitive edge by a build up of available nutrients.

Landscape Restoration
Example: Cultural Restoration
Restoration management is focused on the control of invasive species, and the re-introduction of regular management of heathers and gorse, and returning the heath to a low nutrient state.
Methods of heathland restoration
Tree and scrub removal
Bracken control
Restoration of grazing, mowing, fire
Similar encroachment of trees is an issue everywhere that open habitats were created by humans, including much of the US prairie.
Restored heathland in UK from conifer plantation.

Critical Issues of
Landscape Restoration

Critical Issues of
Landscape Restoration
What are the goals of landscape restoration?
What are indicators of success?
focal species?
landscape patterns?
Risk of failure use a mix of different strategies to spread the risk of failure of any one approach.
Adaptive management is critical
Simulation models have been very valuable for testing options.

Critical Issues of
Landscape Restoration
Landscape ecology can provide information about the larger context of small restoration sites.
Restoration intensity versus extent.

Critical Issues of
Landscape Restoration
Managing for dynamic landscapes versus management for equilibrium?
dynamic future state?
?
current state

Landscape Restoration
Conclusions
“Ecology is not only the science of ecological problems and calamities, it is also the science of their solutions.
“The history of humanity is a race between learning and disaster.
“We as a group have the opportunity to contribute to that race and to do something positive, the challenge is here.”
Hobbs and Saunders, 1993