RS 478 Exam 1

• Initiative 20x20

  8 countries pledging to restore 20 mil ha of degraded land in central and south america by 2020
• Higgs (2014) said that

  Historical knowledge should be used as a guide but not a template
• When did the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration start?

  2021
• According to SER, ecological restoration is the process of assisting the recover of an ecosystem that has been damaged, degraded, or destroyed
• The current concept of ecological restoration aims to help ecosystems recover faster than they would on their own
• reclamation is the process of making a disturbed site habitable to organisms that were originally present
• According to Bliska (2014) eco-cultural restoration equally emphasizes ER and restoring cultural traditions, allows Indigenous people to re-connect with the land, and uses traditional Indigenous knowledge for restoration and stewardship
• Biological filters help us understand the rules of community assembly in a restoration site
• After a severe disturbance, vegetation goes from a community governed by the dynamics of colonization to one governed by competition
• Changes in the nutrients of the soil, animal-plant interactions, initial colonizers, and the traits of organisms cause successional changes in plant communities after a disturbance
• animals promote ecological succession by spreading seeds, bacteria, microorganisms and selective herbivory
• The four categories of land are degraded, wilderness, urban/agricultural and managed natural areas
• The benefits of ER include job creation, food security, hope, carbon sequestration, and resource conservation
• There are three eras of restoration; exploitation, conservation, and restoration
• the exploitation era was 1850-1970 and was characterized by high resource extraction
• the conservation era was 1970-2010 and was characterized by actions to curb natural resource exploitation and backlash against human greed. the progress of this era was limited by the increasing human population.
• The restoration era is from 2010-now and is characterized by the idea that ecological restoration will fix the lack of progress made toward resource conservation
• The 5 significant programs of the restoration era are the UN decade of restoration, African restoration initiative, 20x20, bonn challenge 2.0, and the New York declaration on forests
• Traditional ecological knowledge is the indigenous knowledge of local natural resources
• ecocultural restoration

  prioritizing the culture of the local community in a restoration project
• Restoration ecology

  the science that ecological restoration is based on. Provides the concepts, strategies, and procedures for ecological restoration projects.
• Reconciliation ecology

  the science of creating and maintaining new habitats that conserve biodiversity where humans live
• revegetation

  establishing plants in areas without vegetation
• mitigation

  creating or enhancing an ecosystem in one spot to compensate for environmental damage in another
• rehabilitation

  the process of repairing damaged ecosystem functions to make the land more productive
• Ecological engineering

  manipulating natural materials, organisms, and the environment to achieve human goals or solve problems
• Rewilding

  reintroducing wildlife that has been exterminated from the area
• Landscape

  a mosaic of two or more ecosystems that exchange organisms, energy, water, or nutrients
• Reference ecosystem

  serves as a model for planning a restoration project
• Ecological trajectory

  the developmental pathway or timeline of an ecosystem through time
• Community structure

  the general form of a community with respect to the density, stratification, and frequency distribution of species-populations, along with the sizes and life forms of the organisms in that community 
• Succession is the process of development involving changes in species composition and community processes over time
• Disturbance

  a discrete, punctuated killing, displacement, or damaging of an individual(s) that creates an opportunity for a new individual to become established
• Primary succession

  when a severe disturbance eliminates most or all life in the ecosystem
• secondary succession a process of community change after a disturbance that does not completely destroy the community
• in primary successions, the net primary productive and decomposition levels are close to zero
• in secondary successions, the initial carbon levels are much higher than primary successions
• NPP rates surge after plant colonization starts
• In secondary successions, the initial colonizers are propagated from surviving individuals
• adding organic matter to a disturbed site speeds up succession