Monitoring Restoration Effectiveness

  • Can long-term restoration outcomes be predicted from short-term data? How long should we track restoration projects to verify their success?

Ecological Restoration is currently in the global spotlight. ​​At present, billions of dollars are being poured into restoration projects globally. Unfortunately, funds to monitor restoration outcomes are not always included in these projects and rarely funded for more than two years. To prioritize more efficient use of limited resources, it is essential to have standardized guidelines that establish how much monitoring is useful to gauge project success.

OUR APPROACH: This working group will leverage existing restoration networks to locate projects that have collected data on restoration outcomes and conduct an extensive literature review. With these resources, the group will construct a database and apply a standardized format for the collection of data on ecological and socio-economic outcomes.  The group will then analyze these data to determine whether long-term outcomes of restoration projects can be predicted from shorter-term data and discern if/how this differs by the metric under consideration and/or biophysical conditions. Finally, the group will track the monitoring costs relative to other project expenditures to evaluate the resources necessary to sufficiently monitor restoration outcomes.

Team Status:

  • Ongoing

Goals

  • Collate and analyze long-term data on multifaceted outcomes of tropical forest restoration projects (carbon storage, biodiversity, socio-economic, etc.).
  • Review restoration accreditation standards to identify what is required of projects in terms of monitoring, verification, and reporting, and identify synergies and gaps.
  • Develop a freely available online tool for practitioners that provides monitoring protocols based on selected goals and analyzes data input in a standardized format.
  • Integrate findings into broader initiatives to standardize restoration implementation and monitoring globally (e.g., UN Standards of practice to guide ecosystem restoration).

Teams

Leaders

Laura Toro

  • Missouri Botanical Garden

Leland Werden

  • ETH Zurich

Jennfier Powers

  • University of Minnesota

Members

Sara Löfqvist

  • ETH Zurich

Isabel Hillman

  • Conservation International

Zak Zahawi

  • Charles Darwin Foundation

David Reyes

  • Ministerio de Ambiente y Energia, Costa Rica

Selene Torres

  • Wildlife Conservation Society

Shalom Addo-Danso

  • Forest Research Institute of Ghana

Depi Susilawati

  • Australian National University

Cristy Portales-Reyes

  • Saint Louis University

Pooja Choksi

  • University of Minnesota

Silvia Secchi

  • University of Iowa

Advisors

Susan Cook-Patton

  • The Nature Conservancy

Robin Chazdon

  • University of the Sunshine Coast and World Resources Institute

Karen Holl

  • University of California, Santa Cruz

Pedro Brancalion

  • University of Sao Paulo

Lyndall Bull

  • Food and Agricultural Organization

Eva Garen

  • Environmental Leadership and Training Initiative
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