Restoring Resilient Ecosystems (RestREco)

恢复弹性生态系统（RestREco）

基本信息

批准号：
NE/V006487/1
负责人：
Rosemary Hails
金额：
$ 19.5万
依托单位：
National Trust
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2020
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2020 至无数据
项目状态：
未结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FV006487%2F1
关键词：
Restoring Resilient Ecosystems RestREco

项目摘要

There is a global biodiversity crisis driven by mounting pressures including land degradation and climate change. Within the UK, responses include the Government's 25 Year Environment Plan, which sets out a vision to secure a more biodiverse, connected and resilient landscape. The Natural Capital Committee has argued for the need to secure Net Environmental Gains, and this is a provision of the upcoming Environment Bill. A recent report from the UK Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology highlights the needs to secure our natural capital, not just to support biodiversity, but also ensure the provision of wider ecosystem services. Questions remain, however, as to how we achieve net environmental gain; what should go where? What does success look like? How long may it take to reassemble resilient communities that can reliably deliver ecosystem services? One widely adopted approach to securing net environmental gain is that of "ecological restoration". However, using specific natural and semi-natural ecosystems to define endpoints is increasingly contested, as target "pristine" states are hard to define, climate change is leading to a shifting baseline, and there is a need to restore ecosystems that are resilient to future pressures. We need a new paradigm for goal-seeking in ecological restoration which goes beyond reference systems, is agnostic as to prior assumptions of intactness, integrity and system "health", based on diagnostics of characteristics of functionally intact systems.There is an aspiration across the devolved administrations to deliver net environmental gain in biodiversity across all land uses. However, the restoration of ecological communities has been led by practitioners, with relatively little evidence gathered as to how individual restoration projects link together spatially to enhance the resilience of communities. This consortium brings together leading academic ecologists with a public sector organisation and a charity at the forefront of practical restoration activities, to extract the evidence from past activities through a natural experiment, and test resilience through manipulations.We intend to measure biodiversity, architecture and multifunctionality in ecosystems in different stages of transition from a degraded state, identify determinants and measures of complexity, and seek signals of emergent properties - especially resilience to perturbation. We have chosen grasslands and woodlands, being two major habitat types targeted for restoration programmes. Further to this we shall explore how approaches to accelerating re-integration of systems may affect emergent properties.In summary, we propose to move restoration science forward, but considering complexity and resilience as fundamental aims for restoration projects, rather than attempting to re-create specific target ecosystems.

土地退化和气候变化等日益严峻的压力引发了全球生物多样性危机。在英国，应对措施包括政府的 25 年环境计划，该计划提出了确保生物更加多样化、互联互通且具有复原力的景观的愿景。自然资本委员会主张需要确保净环境收益，这是即将出台的环境法案的一项规定。英国议会科学技术办公室最近的一份报告强调了保护我们的自然资本的必要性，不仅是为了支持生物多样性，而且是为了确保提供更广泛的生态系统服务。然而，问题依然存在：我们如何实现环境净收益？什么应该去哪里？成功是什么样的？重新组建能够可靠地提供生态系统服务的有弹性的社区可能需要多长时间？一种广泛采用的确保净环境收益的方法是“生态恢复”。然而，使用特定的自然和半自然生态系统来定义终点越来越受到争议，因为目标“原始”状态很难定义，气候变化正在导致基线发生变化，并且需要恢复能够适应未来的生态系统压力。我们需要一种新的生态恢复目标范式，它超越参考系统，基于对功能完整系统特征的诊断，与先前关于完整性、完整性和系统“健康”的假设无关。权力下放的行政部门在所有土地利用中实现生物多样性的净环境收益。然而，生态群落的恢复是由实践者主导的，关于各个恢复项目如何在空间上联系在一起以增强群落的恢复力的证据相对较少。该联盟汇集了领先的学术生态学家、公共部门组织和处于实际恢复活动前沿的慈善机构，通过自然实验从过去的活动中提取证据，并通过操作测试恢复力。我们打算衡量生物多样性、建筑和多功能性在从退化状态过渡的不同阶段的生态系统中，确定复杂性的决定因素和衡量标准，并寻找新兴特性的信号 - 特别是对扰动的恢复力。我们选择了草原和林地作为恢复计划的两种主要栖息地类型。除此之外，我们将探讨加速系统重新整合的方法如何影响新兴属性。总之，我们建议推动恢复科学向前发展，但将复杂性和弹性视为恢复项目的基本目标，而不是试图重新创建具体的目标生态系统。