Ecological Restoration

Question 1

What are the 3 main components of an ecosystem?

Answer 1

1. Composition - species present
2. Structure - three dimensional configuration of land (living/dead plants, soil, landscape traits)
3. Processes and functions (e.g nutrient cycling)

Question 2

What is the difference between ecological restoration and restoration ecology?

Answer 2

Ecological restoration is the practice of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem while restoration ecology is the study of restoration methods that informs ER

Question 3

What are 4 types of ecological rehabilitation?

Answer 3

Habitat enhancement
Remediation
Mitigation
Reclamation

Question 4

What is habitat enhancement?

Answer 4

Ecological improvement of a site that may be different from historical conditions (also termed replacement)

Question 5

What is remediation?

Answer 5

Specific to removal, reduction, or neutralization of toxic or non-native substances

Question 6

What is mitigation?

Answer 6

The improvement of a site because of degradation to another site in compliance with a permit etc.

Question 7

What is reclamation?

Answer 7

The improvement of a site for reasons outside ecological value (eg. safety or aesthetics)

Question 8

Two different definitions of ER

Answer 8

1. The return of an ecosystem to historical conditions

2. The improvement of a site to any level (ie. rehabilitation)

Question 9

What are the 4 ecosystem services?

Answer 9

Provisioning
Regulating
Supporting
Cultural

Question 10

What are provisioning services?

Answer 10

The goods that we acquire from ecosystems such as food or wood products

Question 11

What are regulating services?

Answer 11

The benefits obtained from the regulation of ecosystem processes

Question 12

What are supporting services?

Answer 12

The services an ecosystem provides for habitat such as soil formation and photosynthesis)

Question 13

What are cultural services?

Answer 13

The use of an ecosystem for recreation or just for its intrinsic or aesthetic value

Question 14

What is the difference between a stressor and an impact?

Answer 14

A stressor is the factor responsible for ecosystem degradation (causal factors like population and consumption, and indirect drivers like fishing/hunting and industry)

And an impact is how the ecosystem is degraded (direct pressures like habitat loss or contamination)

Question 15

What things are impacted by stressors? (3 points)

Answer 15

Biodiversity
Ecosystem services
Biotic relationships (predator/prey, competition, mutualism etc.)

Question 16

Types of biodiversity impacted by stressors (3 points)

Answer 16

Genetic diversity
Species diversity
Ecosystem diversity

Question 17

What are the 2 main goals of ecological restoration?

Answer 17

Restoring native species

Restoring ecosystem services

Question 18

Why does ER focus on aquatic ecosystems? (4 points)

Answer 18

They have been extensively degraded

They are valuable in supporting native species diversity and ecosystem services

They are an indicator of bigger issues

They respond quickly to restoration efforts because they are dynamic

Question 19

Why is ER an inexact science? (2 points)

Answer 19

We lack clear goals

We lack clear and reliable restoration methods

Question 20

Why do restorationists lack clear goals? (3 points)

Answer 20

Lack of suitable baseline data (ie. pre-impact site description)

Lack of comparable reference sites (assuming reference is in original state)

Ecosystems are naturally variable so both baseline data and reference sites may not even be applicable

Question 21

Why do restorationists lack clear and reliable methods? (2 points)

Answer 21

ER is a young field

Management is just beginning to be informed by ecological sciences

Question 22

What are the 8 key traits of properly function ecosystems?

Answer 22

Efficiency - capturing and storing energy

Redundancy - higher richness within or between species

Sustainability - ability of species to reproduce

Resiliency - depends on the efficiency, redundancy, and sustainability of an ecosystem. Ability for ecosystem to return to previous state after a disturbance

Adaptability - genetic and species diversity allow ecosystems to adapt to changing conditions

Organization - species/communities are organized in their historical way (including genetically resulting from evolution)

Continuous - gradual transitions are seen between ecosystems (ecotones)

Thresholds in space and time - each species and process requires a minimum amount of space and time to work

Question 23

How do we assess the condition of an ecosystem?

Answer 23

We use indicators because we cannot directly measure traits of an ecosystem (can’t measure the sickness directly so we have to measure the symptoms)

Question 24

What are the 6 key indicators of ecosystem health?

Answer 24

Diversity of native species - most strongly correlated factor to ecosystem health

Presence of over-abundant native species, non-native species and invasives (eg. Didimo algae)

Water quality - high levels of nutrients might indicate a “leaky” watershed that isn’t conserving soil and nutrients well

Hydrologic processes - can look at fluctuations
 over time (eg. Flashiness) 

Soil characteristics - depth of topsoil, OM, mineral components, porosity

Toxicants - heavy metals, organic pollutants (POPs)

Question 25

Why is native species diversity most commonly used to assess ecosystem “health”? (4 points)

Answer 25

It is responsible for many traits and processes in an ecosystem including:

• efficiency
• resiliency
• adaptability
• nutrient cycling etc.

Question 26

Why do we use many indicators to assess ecosystem functioning?

Answer 26

Because ecosystems are complex we must use multiple indicators in both site assessment and monitoring

Question 27

What do we use these indicators for? (2 points)

Answer 27

We use them to assess the degradation of a site

Or

We use them to compare our monitoring data with reference data to see if our restoration attempts were successful

Question 28

What types of references do we use to compare our indicator values? (3 points)

Answer 28

Historical data on restoration site (can use oral history as well for historical site conditions)

Reference sites (unimpacted) - if not available, can use reference indicators

Control sites (impacted by not restored)

Question 29

What is a reference indicator?

Answer 29

If reference sites are unavailable, restorationists can use indicator values from literature to assess degradation or success of plan

Question 30

What are some examples of impacts to ecosystems? (5 points)

Answer 30

Habitat loss
Species decline 
Invasive species
Changes to disturbance regimes 
Losses to keystone species (biotic relations)

Question 31

Why does ER focus on native species composition diversity? (2 points)

Answer 31

It is most strongly correlated to ecosystem health because it determines many ecosystem traits (resiliency etc.)

It is relatively easy to measure

Question 32

3 characteristics of a good ER framework

Answer 32

Systematic
Rigorous
Iterative

Question 33

In what circumstances might ER not be a good alternative? (2 points)

Answer 33

When natural processes are improving conditions on their own through succession etc.

When the costs outweigh the gains- success is too unlikely or expensive given constraints (in this case it’s better to put effort into more feasible project)

Question 34

How is ER an iterative process?

Answer 34

It involves adaptive management whereby monitoring is needed to ensure success and may lead to learning new details and thus creating new objectives or changing original treatments/objectives