Assessing innovations for upscaling forest landscape restoration


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Date

2024-09-20

Publication Type

Review Article

ETH Bibliography

yes

Citations

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Data

Abstract

There is an increasing urgency to implement large-scale ecosystem restoration to mitigate the biodiversity and climate crises. These efforts must be scaled up to counteract the widespread degradation of the world's forests, although restoration costs can often limit their application. Thus, there is a pressing need to identify cost-effective approaches that catalyze landscape-scale ecological recovery. Here, we highlight seven assisted restoration innovations with demonstrated local-scale results that, once upscaled, hold promise to rapidly regenerate forests. We comprehensively assessed how each approach facilitated forest, woodland, and/or mangrove recovery across 143 studies. Our results reveal techniques with a marked ability to catalyze vegetation recovery compared to "business-as-usual"approaches. However, the context-dependent costbenefit ratio and feasibility of applying particular approaches requires careful consideration. Our assessment emphasizes that we already have many of the tools necessary to drive the terrestrial restoration movement forward. It is time to implement and assess their efficacy at scale.

Publication status

published

Editor

Book title

Journal / series

Volume

7 (9)

Pages / Article No.

1515 - 1528

Publisher

Cell Press

Event

Edition / version

Methods

Software

Geographic location

Date collected

Date created

Subject

biochar; biowaste; direct seeding; economic species integration; mixed plantings; microbiome; restoration tools; spatially patterned planting; vegetative propagation

Organisational unit

09625 - Crowther, Thomas Ward (ehemalig) / Crowther, Thomas Ward (former) check_circle

Notes

Funding

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