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ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION: PRIORITIZATION TO ACHIEVE EMERGENT BENEFITS
Citation:
Jorgensen*, E E., B. H. Wilson, AND S. Yarbrough. ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION: PRIORITIZATION TO ACHIEVE EMERGENT BENEFITS. Presented at ReVA-MAIA Conf, Philadelphia, PA, May 12 - 15, 2003.
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public.
Description:
The declining ability of ecosystems to support themselves and the demands placed on them is not new. Initial efforts to counteract these effects and trends focused on individual species (e.g., Endangered Species Act) or environmental media (e.g., Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act). However, evidence of long-term ecosystem decline continues to mount (e.g., global warming, species extinction, spread of tropical diseases). In the desire to efficiently use resources (be they limited or otherwise) to improve ecosystems and their services there is a growing need to identify, develop, and transfer restoration prioritization knowledge. While practitioners within the restoration specialty understand and use the term 'restoration prioritization' with consistency, we have seen that this consistency rapidly breaks down in discussions with non-specialists. This leads to miscommunication and inefficiency and distracts from restoration's first priority; improving ecosystems. In this paper we seek to identify common factors that need to be considered for restoration prioritization. Restoration seeks whole ecosystem improvement to a condition that is intended to model/reproduce/duplicate the ecosystem's original natural condition: restoration seeks to establish a condition that is self-regenerating, self-adapting, and self-maintaining. Implicit within restoration is the expectation that restoration can be most beneficial if sites are chosen to complement each other such that benefits occurring at individual sites combine to produce greater, emergent benefits for the ecosystem as a whole. Watershed Restoration to achieve water quality improvement is a good example of an expected emergent benefit. How to prioritize restoration to most efficiently achieve this emergent benefit is an important question. We reviewed restoration literature to identify common prioritization themes. We grouped themes into orders or priority as a guide to enhance communication and to propose a loosely organized hierarchical framework for organizing a complex subject. First order tasks include planning and background data collection. Themes include identification of critical watershed values, identification and protection of the best areas, identification of reference conditions/sites, and similar projects. Second order tasks include development of project identity and knowledge refinement. Themes include development of stakeholder involvement, goal and objective setting, development of knowledge of species' natural history and biology, and identification of restoration hot spots. Third order tasks include initiation of the restoration. Themes are removal of deleterious anthropogenic effects and use of ecosystem recovery to initiate restoration. Fourth Order tasks initiate active restoration, contingency response, and knowledge sharing. Themes include adaptive management and monitoring, recasting of fundamental assumptions, and helping others. Finally, additional creative thinking with project maintenance and contingency planning will help to further develop a language of restoration progress as an improvement over traditional success vs. failure analysis.