Join us on Wednesday, November 20, at 4:00 pm UTC for the Funk Biogeography Seminar given by Dr. Robin Chazdon.
Talk Title: “Leveraging Natural Regeneration of Tropical Forests to Achieve Large-scale Forest Restoration”
Forest restoration is a global priority, but we lack a practical framework for matching restoration opportunities with the most appropriate and effective restoration interventions. Restoration interventions must be case specific and tailored to specific processes that drive the degradation and recovery of focal ecosystems. These processes include a wide range of socio-economic and biophysical factors. In many cases, effective forest restoration can occur with little or no human assistance; in other cases, moderate or intensive interventions are needed to assist forest recovery. Under suitable conditions, natural regeneration of forests provides the greatest benefits for recovery of native biodiversity and resilience to disturbances. A recent study illustrates this approach in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest region. We used high-resolution land-cover data over the past 20 years to model the spatially-explicit factors that best explained presence/absence of naturally regenerating forest. These factors were then used to map the potential for natural regeneration over the next 20 years and identify locations where tree planting is needed and where assisted natural regeneration is likely to be successful. More recently, a global model used a similar approach to estimate the potential for natural regeneration across the tropics, highlighting a tremendous opportunity for cost–effective forest restoration that can reach large spatial scales. This information also highlights where various interventions can be applied to assist natural regeneration where there are specific barriers that stand in the way and what enabling conditions are needed to foster social and economic benefits for local communities. Leveraging the potential for natural regeneration and predicting the social and ecological outcomes of natural recovery can help to maximize the effectiveness and benefits of forest restoration at regional, national, and global scales.
