Restoring a freshwater tidal marsh on the Anacostia River, Washington, DC© Ecological Restoration and Management, Inc.Today, approximately 70 percent of the world’s ecosystems have been altered to some degree, and the whole Earth may be approaching a tipping point toward an uncertain regime as a consequence of the accelerated global loss of biodiversity and ecosystem functionality. Ecosystem restoration and creation is necessary now more than ever before to slow and, where possible, reverse that loss. But devising successful restoration strategies can be tricky.
Following ecosystem restoration, it may take many decades or centuries for damaged ecosystems to recover the structure and functionality they had prior to degradation. For example, in five depressional wetlands in the state of New York, only 50 percent of their organic matter was recovered 50 years after they were restored. Similarly, artificial ecosystems take just as long to resemble the selected reference systems its engineers are trying to recreate.
Some restorations and creations fail altogether, such as wetlands that end up dominated by invasive reeds or prairies where focal threatened species do not reestablish. In cases of success, some components, like highly mobile vertebrates, recover or re-assemble faster than others, like plants, which can affect the speed and trajectory of ecosystem recovery or development. ...
