Special Issue "Terrestrial Ecosystem Restoration"
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2012)
Dr. Susan Cordell
Restoration Ecology is a relatively new field where concepts such as sustainability are mostly theoretically posed rather than quantitatively based. Traditional restoration science has been guided by successional theory towards a historic reference system. However, restoration practice must adapt new strategies as many systems appear resilient to traditional restoration approaches. This special issue of Sustainability addresses this question: How do we move forward rather than backward towards ecosystem restoration for sustainability in today’s anthropogenically-influenced systems? Recent work in restoration practice confirms that a major conceptual restoration flaw is the assumption that terrestrial systems are orderly and static rather than dynamic. Hence current restoration success criteria perhaps are not in fact realistic or sustainable. Furthermore, how do we incorporate future disturbance regimes into criterion for sustainability—be they natural or anthropogenic, small scale or large scale? This special issue will publish papers that address questions such as how do we define, promote, and evaluate science, practice, and policy-based sustainability success criteria into the field of restoration ecology? It is a goal of this special issue to publish papers that span restoration sustainability objectives that may range from mandated restoration (i.e., endangered species recovery), to reversing biodiversity loss, to the recovery of ecosystem function. In addition, this special issue aims to publish papers investigating these questions across trophic levels, geographic origins, disturbance regimes, and/or conflicting multi-use perspectives. Papers that evaluate progress and explore novel approaches towards the sustainability of restoration theory or practice are encouraged.
Dr. Susan Cordell
- ecosystem sustainability
- success criteria
- novel approaches
- traditional restoration
- disturbance regimes