Ecosystem restoration in policy and practice: restore, develop, adapt

RESTORE member Katarina Eckerberg will give the keynote address at the forum “How do we work together for ecosystem health” organized by the Centre of Excellence for Climate Change, Woodland & Forest Health, Murdoch University, Australia, on 29 March 2012.

RESTORE members Katarina Eckerberg and Susan Baker are participating in a seminar “Facing the future – Biodiversity, ecology and economy: three pillars in future agriculture and forestry practice?” on 23 March 2012 at Kungl. Skogs- och Lantbruksakademien. Susan’s presentation “From knowing to acting – ecological Restoration in theory and practice” is directly related to her work on the RESTORE project.

The overall goals of the seminar, which involves several of the King’s Professors of Environmental Science, are a deepening the discussion on biodiversity, ecosystem services, and economy. What will decreasing biodiversity mean for sustainable production in agriculture and forestry? How can the green industries adapt and integrate existing knowledge in order to provide for a sustainable usage of ecosystem and biodiversity values? Can economically sound green businesses survive and prosper with more focus on biodiversity? What new knowledge is needed?

RESTORE was happy to host Dr. Laura Meyerson from University of Rhode Island on 7-9 March 2012. She is a 2011-2012 Fulbright Scholar at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

First, she delivered a lecture in the Umeå University EMG departmental seminar series: “A North American perspective on Phragmites: success, invasion, vilification and restoration.” Found globally, Phragmites australis is one of the world’s most successful plant species. Viewed as a valuable plant in its native range, it is an unwanted invader in its introduced range. The talk focused on the mechanisms that facilitate the spread of P. australis, its genetic variety, the impacts of this plant in its introduced range, and the potential for restoring communities once it is eradicated.

Then, she participated in the two-day RESTORE team meeting in Örnskjölsvik. She both gave a personal presentation, “Perspectives on managing invasive species in a changing world,” and contributed throughout the team discussions.

Special thanks go to the Fulbright Commission of Sweden for facilitating Dr. Meyerson’s visit through the Inter-Country Lecturer Program.

RESTORE post-doctoral researcher Anna Zachrisson has been awarded the The Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry’s 2012 award for outstanding doctoral thesis. Anna’s thesis, “Commons protected for or from the people?” (Umeå University, 2009), analyzes the establishment phase of the co-management of multi-level, multi-use commons in order to characterize design principles common to the emergence of co-management processes which improve institutional robustness. The thesis is a collection of four papers: Paper I compares national, regional and local public opinions about protected areas through a multi-level survey; Papers II to IV each presents a case study of a designation process within the Swedish mountain region. The comparative analysis proposes that the characteristics of representation, reason(ableness), powers, accountability and learning (the co-management process principles) are essential for the realization of co-management arrangements of multi-level and multi-use commons.

Read the feature article “Hittade rätt miljö i Umeå” about Anna and her work published in Västerbottens-Kuriren (in Swedish).

The first scientific article based on research funded by the RESTORE project has now been published. Dolly Jørgensen wrote a response article on the definition of reintroduction that appeared in the November 2011 issue of Restoration Ecology. It argues that defining reintroduction is not straightforward. Commonly used definitions of what constitutes a reintroduction all include some reference to “historical” conditions, but what exactly that encompasses is left open. The article examines two parts of the reintroduction confusion: first, how the guidance documents and laws define reintroduction and second, how these definitions might be interpreted when reintroductions are presented in public forums. Rather than moving away from reintroductions toward interventions of other names, the article encourages scientists to use a broad definition of reintroduction presented by the IUCN to open up reintroduction as a viable label for bringing a species back to an area regardless of when it was previously there or why it became extinct.

Citation: Jørgensen, D. (2011) What’s History Got to Do with It? A Response to Seddon’s Definition of Reintroduction. Restoration Ecology 19: 705–708. doi: 10.1111/j.1526-100X.2011.00834.x

Robots really can do field work! While doing her field work this summer, Eliza set up a robotic camera mount and a camera which was fully zoomed and took thousands of photographs at each of her field sites. These were later stitched into gigapixel panoramic photographs (GigaPans). GigaPans are amazingly detailed images in which one can zoom in, move around and explore. In this digital age, imagery is becoming increasingly popular as a means of sharing information and presenting scientific findings in a more engaging way, but can also be a means of collecting data.

Eliza plans on using the GigaPans to measure productivity of trees, percent cover of boulders in the stream, and plant diversity of the riparian zones. But, there could be a gigillion other uses for them… Do you have any other ideas?

Find more of Eliza’s GigaPans to explore by going to www.gigapan.org and searching “Sweden stream.”

Four of the RESTORE team members – Christer Nilsson, Susan Baker, Dolly Jørgensen, and Eliza Maher Hasselquist – attended the conference ‘Restoring the North – Challenges and Opportunities’ in Iceland, 20-22 October 2011. The conference was organized by ReNo, a Nordic ecological restoration network.

Susan was one of the keynote speakers with her talk ‘Legislation, policy and implementation of restoration’. Christer gave an oral presentation based on the RESTORE joint paper currently being developed on divisions in restoration practice. Eliza presented a poster on using a chronosequence to evaluate restoration outcomes and Dolly presented her poster on beaver reintroduction projects in the media.

In addition to a lively scientific program, the group was taken on two excursions. The first short excursion was a trip to the Flói Bird Reserve, which has undergone wetlands restoration activities.

Christer at the restored wetlands in the Flói Bird Reserve

The second excursion included a stop at the Soil Conservation Service‘s headquarters in Gunnarsholt, where the service has recently installed a museum exhibit about the long history of soil conservation in Iceland.

Susan Baker examines seeds used in revegetation projects by the Soil Conservation Service

Vegetation has begun to recover near Eyjafjallajökull after the 2010 eruption

One of the RESTORE collaborators, Margaret Palmer, has become the director of the newly-founded National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC). SESYNC has been established at the University of Maryland with a five-year grant from the National Science Foundation. Financial support is provided for scientific gatherings (e.g. meetings for research groups, conferences and workshops), as well as resident postdoctoral, visiting and sabbatical fellows.

Marcus Hall, senior lecturer in the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at University of Zurich, will be visiting Umeå and the RESTORE project on 26-27 September 2011.

His public lecture in the Department of Ecology and Environmental Science will be Monday, 26 September, 13:00-14:00 in Älgsalen, Uminova Science Park. This talk is titled “To belong or not to belong: Naturalized species in historical context.”

Abstract: Lying between the aliens and natives are the naturalized species, those creatures who moved or have been moved–and for better or worse, are accepted in their new environments. This presentation uses a historical methodology to reveal our changing understanding of this class of species, and to explore why the naturalized are not as threatening to us or to our ecosystems as are the aliens. Species’ invasiveness has driven novelty into ecosystems, but so has belongingness.

He will give a second talk titled “Extracting culture or injecting nature? Rewilding in transatlantic perspective”, Tuesday September 27, in S505, Samhällsvetarhuset, 13:00 -­14:30, as part of the USSTE seminar series.

Abstract: In searching for grand narratives of Europe’s environmental past, surely one must consider domestication and gardenification. While New Worlders across the Atlantic have been obsessed with defining their character and their landscapes by wild, untrammeled spaces, Europeans have been enraptured by their own civility, cities, high culture, and humanized places. Yet in recent efforts to set the earth right again (restoration), Europeans even more than Americans have become enthusiastic about the pursuit of rewilding. Dedomestication is generally reserved for animals, not landscapes. What is driving (and has driven) this preference for injecting wildness over extracting the human element? This presentation aims to unravel what is meant by rewilding, and why so many Europeans are attracted to this flavor of restorative rhetoric.

Dr. Hall’s research focuses on ecological restoration and rewilding, environmental effects of war, malaria control with pesticides, alien invasive species, and other transatlantic environmental questions. We used two of his books (Restoration and History: The Search for a Usable Environmental Past and Earth Repair: A Transatlantic History of Environmental Restoration) in our recent PhD course “Perspectives on Ecological Restoration”. More information about Dr. Hall is available here.

Rebecca Lave, Department of Geography, Indiana University (USA), will give a lecture titled “Free Range Science: Producing Scientific Expertise Outside the Academy” on Wednesday, May 18 in cooperation with RESTORE. The lecture will be given as part of the EMG weekly seminar series in Lilla Hörsalen, KBC building, 13.00-14.00.

Abstract of the talk:
The American stream restoration field is an unusual state, convulsed since the mid-1990s by a struggle that has come to be known as the Rosgen Wars. Over the vehement protests of university- and agency-based scientists, Dave Rosgen, a consultant with little formal training, has become the most widely acknowledged scientific expert in the field. Rosgen’s approach has been adopted by the majority of resource agencies at the state and federal levels in the United States. His knowledge claims, applied tools, and educational system are increasingly seen not just as scientifically legitimate, but as a more legitimate basis for stream restoration practice than academically-produced science and training. How can we explain this startling reversal of the typical dynamics of scientific authority? Based on social and natural science data gathered over four years of research, I argue that the root causes of Rosgen’s success lie not in the man or his method, but in political economic forces internal and external to the stream restoration field. Simply put, Rosgen met the needs of restoration markets and the state by providing the lingua franca, standards of practice, and educational system for the field when universities failed to do so. Further, broad changes in science and environmental management have strengthened Rosgen’s authority by encouraging the privatization of knowledge production and its commercialization in the service of environmental markets.

Dr. Lave’s work focuses on stream restoration practices, including restoration success criteria and mitigation banking practices. Her recent articles include: “Privitizing stream restoration in the US”, “Why You Should Pay Attention to Stream Mitigation Banking”, and “Two Decades of River Restoration in California: What Can We Learn?”