In a collaborative effort aimed at enhancing the effectiveness of global restoration tree planting sites, the Global Restore Project is partnering with Dr. Sybryn Maes, a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with KU Leuven in Belgium and international restoration NGO WeForest. This project is currently focused on the resilience and restoration performance of tropical dry forests.

Dr. Maes will investigate context-dependent factors that may influence seedling performance by synthesizing monitoring data from seedlings in planting sites across the (sub)tropics. A specific emphasis in the site selection goes out to those areas that are often overlooked in existing planting syntheses, such as those on the African continent. Sybryn will investigate whether the following factors influence survival or growth rates in these planting sites: the functional identity of the planted species, the planting site’s environmental conditions (e.g. climate, forest type), the planting & aftercare methods, and specific location.

Sybryn will analyze data from over 150 (sub)tropical sites spanning 20 countries and 6 continents, and more importantly, covering a diverse range of species and environmental conditions, but with comparable planting & aftercare methods. This should provide a comprehensive understanding of planted seedling performance under various conditions.

While previous studies have explored relationships between environmental drivers and planting performance, the variability in findings across studies raises questions about the generalizability of these patterns. Moreover, there is a lack of studies incorporating the effects of (planting &) aftercare methods, likely due to standardization challenges across studies. Therefore, this study specifically aims to (i) assess interactive effects among drivers to elucidate the generalizability of relationships, and (ii) include key aftercare treatments such as weeding, fertilization, or irrigation. By identifying ‘winner and loser’ species (traits), conditions, and aftercare methods, the findings will hopefully offer valuable insights for restoration project teams worldwide.

Thank you to all data contributors participating in this effort! The Global Restore Project is taking in tree planting datasets from other regions and biomes, and we have our eye on eventually expanding our syntheses across forests globally.

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Insect pollinators are critical for the maintenance of biodiversity and functioning ecosystems, and pollinator declines globally require restoration strategies to reconnect plant-pollinator mutualisms. Seed mixes that are rich in flowering plant species are important to restore vegetation communities and provide the nectar and pollen resources required by insect pollinators. However, it remains unclear how reseeding landscapes influence the composition of pollinator communities and ultimately plant-pollinator interaction networks.

Collaborating with the Global Restore Project, iDiv researchers are identifying locations across Europe that restored landscapes using seed mixes and traditional management practices, to understand how different restoration methods influence pollinator communities. Pollinator collections will begin at locations in the summer of 2024. We hypothesize that reseeded communities will result in more simplified networks compared to sites restored with traditional management, because seed mixes only revegetate areas with a subset of all available plant species and primarily benefit abundant and generalist bee species. We are always looking to enroll more locations within our study and would be happy to start a dialogue if this project interests you. As a part of this effort, we will plan an exciting pollinator summer school at iDiv for 2024.

This study is led by Dr. Will Glenny (Alexander von Humboldt post-doctoral fellow) who is a part of the Spatial Interaction Ecology group led by Prof. Dr. Tiffany Knight at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) in Leipzig, Germany. Will completed his PhD at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana, USA, where his research helped improve the selection of plant species for pollinator habitat restoration in large, semi-natural ecosystems.

Click here to get in touch with us & find out more!

This hypothesis states that different restoration outcomes, such as species diversity or physical structure, would be differently predictable according to an order from coarse to fine community properties, and that predictability of restoration outcomes would increase with more severe environmental conditions constraining species establishment.

Using data from seed-based restoration projects in the United States located along an aridity gradient, we encountered mixed support for the hypothesis. While fine-scale outcomes such as species composition followed the original hypothesis, other outcomes such as functional composition were less predictable in more arid sites. Based on our results, we discuss additional factors that might influence the predictability of restoration outcomes beyond those originally proposed in the hypothesis, and emphasize the importance of continuous monitoring and active management beyond one-time seed addition for successful grassland restoration in the United States.

This study was led by Diana Bertuol-Garcia, a PhD Candidate at the University of Victoria, working under the supervision of Dr. Nancy Shackelford. Diana’s research spans restoration and community ecology, focusing on the trait-based drivers of grassland resilience to drought and the potential implications for grassland restoration in the face of climate change. For her work on this paper, Diana earned the 3rd place in the Early Career Publication Award of the Ecological Society of America restoration section. She has also been awarded the Organization of American States Graduate Scholarship and the Lorene Kennedy Field Award from the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria.

See original paper:

• Diana Bertuol-Garcia, Emma Ladouceur, Lars A. Brudvig, Daniel C. Laughlin, Seth M. Munson, Michael F. Curran, Kirk W. Davies, Lauren N. Svejcar, Nancy Shackelford 2023 Testing the hierarchy of predictability in grassland restoration across a gradient of environmental severity Ecological Applications

Pia Bradler made us this nice poster in 2022 when she was interning with us and we attended the Frontiers in Environmental Research conference together. Pia is now a PhD student with the BetaFor project at Leuphana University. We will continue to update this great poster and adapt it for different purposes into the future.

sDiv is the Synthesis Centre of iDiv.

The sDiv SynFlex flexible funding mechanism helped give our project the research support it needed for our long-term vision, without explicitly needing to fund meetings and working group members to fly here to iDiv.

Our project, sReStoReS - Restoration Synthesis to Reimagine Success, helped us to hire extra support and engage new folks in our next phase. See more details about our project featured in the sDiv 2023 newsletter.

We are excited to be apart of, and supporting three sDiv working groups:

• sToration - Applying Coexistence Theory to Restoration Ecology and Adaptive Management
• sPriority - Mechanisms and Quantification of Priority Effects
• sFutures - Integrating functional and phylogenetic underpinnings into restoration science

We are working hard on the outcomes through 2024 and are excited to share the resulting work on our open science page and in our news. Stay tuned!

Emma will continue to work on this project as a part of this team at iDiv with Jon Chase, PI of the grant, and with the Biodiversity Synthesis group at iDiv.

Stay tuned!

In our recent publication, we highlight how knowledge sharing can lead to increased and shared success in the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030). We call for increased effort to collate species-level, fine-scale, ecological community data from restoration studies across a wide range of environmental and ecological gradients. These data could be made openly available to the restoration community to maximize evidence-based knowledge sharing and support predictive capacity in ecological community responses to restoration actions.

Check out this cool video about it made by Magda Garbowski & Emma :

Knowledge sharing for shared success in the decade on ecosystem restoration

Now open access in new @BritishEcolSoc Journal, Ecological Solutions and Evidence @AER_ESE_BES here:https://t.co/FySSN4bAtk#GenerationRestoration #Restoration pic.twitter.com/Ff6bmFyJZu

— Emma Ladouceur (@re_sprout) January 4, 2022

Some blogs featuring this work:

• The Decade on Ecosystem Restoration: How can we succeed as restoration scientists through knowledge sharing? Leuphana University Social Ecological Systems (SES) Blog. By Anna Gniwotta

• Knowledge sharing for shared success in the decade on ecosystem restoration The Applied Ecologist By Emma Ladouceur & Pia Bradler

See original paper:

• Emma Ladouceur, Nancy Shackelford, Karma Bouazza, Lars Brudvig, Anna Bucharova, Timo Conradi, Todd E. Erickson, Magda Garbowski, Kelly Garvy, W. Stanley Harpole, Holly P. Jones, Tiffany Knight, Mlungele M. Nsikani, Gustavo Paterno, Katharine Suding, Vicky M. Temperton, Péter Török, Daniel E. Winkler, Jonathan M. Chase 2022 Knowledge sharing for shared success in the decade on ecosystem restoration Ecological Solutions and Evidence

See original paper:

• Emma Ladouceur & Nancy Shackelford 2020 The power of data synthesis to shape the future of the restoration community and capacity Restoration Ecology

The recently declared ‘Decade on Ecological Restoration’ by the United Nations represents a timely opportunity to develop a strong and integrative path forward for ecological restoration.

The Global Restore Project (GRP) aims to bring together restoration researchers globally to pool existing data and knowledge for a deeper understanding of restoration science. This took shape when Emma Ladouceur, Postdoc in the Biodiversity Synthesis & Physiological Diversity groups was planning a restoration synthesis, and met Nancy Shackelford when she was working with Katherine Suding at University of Colorado Boulder as a Postdoc.

Nancy was finishing up her first work with what she called the Global Arid Zone Project (GAZP), looking at seed-based restoration outcomes in global drylands. We decided to become collaborators. Emma proposed to focus on the rest of the global preciptation gradient, and projects which monitored full vegetation community outcomes. We’ve been working together ever since to bring all these data together.

Now Nancy is an Assistant Professor, head of the Restoration Futures Lab, and Director of the Restoration of Natural Systems at University of Victoria on beautiful Vancouver Island, Canada. Emma continues to work on this with the Biodiversity Synthesis group at iDiv.

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