Resource Database

EcoRestore Portal

The new portal is a ‘one-stop-shop’ for all things ecological restoration that should be useful to anyone in Arizona who is interested in native gardening, ecological restoration and vegetation management in general.

In addition to general information about best management practices for restoration in Arizona, the portal supports a survey tool that allows a user to develop a list of candidate restoration species based on management goals and habitat characteristics. We hope this tool provides assistance in creating restoration designs that enhance achievement of management goals.

The website creator (Elise Gornish, egornish@email.arizona.edu) is happy to provide a zoom presentation to you and your stakeholders on the functionality of the website.

Webinar: Why Get Certified?

Why get certified?  How will it benefit you?  Current Certified Ecological Restoration Practitioners Nick Wildman, Paul Davis, Meghan Fellows, and Keith MacCallum joined SER’s Certification Program Coordinator, Jen Lyndall, to talk about why they decided to get certified and what the benefits of certification have been.

SER Webinar: Contributions of Indigenous Peoples and local communities to ecological restoration

Dr. Pamela McElwee presents on one of the key findings of the 2019 Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Global Assessment – that Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLC) are a crucial component of environmental management. She also discusses the review of this assessment, where the roles and relationships of IPLCs and ecosystem restoration are further illustrated. The review also provides examples of how Indigenous and Local Knowledge can be incorporated in the planning, execution, and monitoring of restoration activities.

Rocky Mountain actinorhizal plants: their importance for post-fire recovery and restoration

Actinorhizal plants are a diverse group that form a symbiosis with nitrogen-fixing Frankia bacteria. Actinorhizal plants in the Rocky Mountains are among the most important browse species for wildlife in the region owing to their high protein content resulting from an abundant supply of nitrogen. They play critical roles in soil development and succession following fires. This webinar, presented by Mark Paschke, will focus on the ecology of Rocky Mountain actinorhizal plants in post-fire environments and their potential for expanded use in ecological restoration of burned areas.

Webinar: Primer of Ecological Restoration

Dr. Karen Holl will discuss her new “Primer of Ecological Restoration” and associated online teaching resources. In twelve brief chapters, the book introduces readers to the basics of restoration project planning, monitoring, implementation, and adaptive management, as well as ecological principles to guide ecosystem recovery. Dr. Holl will give an overview of the book and discuss how the book could be used as part of full-length or short courses on restoration ecology or serve as a jumping off point for new practitioners in the field.

Karen Holl is a Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research focuses on understanding how local and landscape scale processes affect ecosystem recovery from human disturbance and using this information to restore rain forests in Latin America and chaparral, grassland and riparian systems in California. She has taught a course in restoration ecology for over 20 years and advises numerous land management and conservation organizations in California and internationally on ecological restoration. She was selected as the 2017 co-winner of the Theodore Sperry Award of the Society for Ecological Restoration and is currently the faculty director of the Kenneth S. Norris Center for Natural History at UCSC Santa Cruz.

Webinar: Training design, data type, and data reliability in citizen science

The work of citizen scientists expands the data collection possibilities in natural resource management.  The problem is that some scientists and land managers view the data collected by citizen scientists as unreliable. To investigate the potential correlation between training and data reliability in citizen science, the researcher assessed 22 citizen science programs around the world. These data indicated alignment between citizen science training, andragogy, and social learning theory. Also revealed was a bimodal distribution of citizen science programs that related data collection type and training design across the general categorizations of citizen science engagement. Quantitative data analyses supported the assessment of data reliability when citizen scientists collected water quality or photographic data. Terrestrial data collected lacked quantitative assessment and was therefore more difficult to validate. Few citizen science programs illustrated principles of backwards design. The implementation of training assessment to validate citizen scientist learning gains may promote data reliability in citizen science.

Presenter Bio:

Dr. Maggie Gaddis teaches biology at the University of Colorado – Colorado Springs. She is also a member of the Bard College Citizen Science faculty.  Her research involves ecological restoration monitoring in southern Colorado and citizen science. In the education realm, Maggie investigates the efficacy of training for citizen scientists. In the science realm, she investigates the ecological success of restoration efforts in public lands.

Webinar: Where road ecology and ecological restoration converge

Road ecology has made substantial advances over the last few decades. Our knowledge has increased and mitigation measures to reduce the impacts of roads and traffic on wildlife are now widespread and implemented regularly. In many cases, the mitigation measures address human safety through reducing collisions with large mammals, provide safe crossing opportunities for wildlife, and it can even make economic sense to implement these mitigation measures. These successes may be reason to celebrate, but it may also be time for us to think about whether we are missing something, where we need to do a better job. While road projects are typically linear in nature, the needs of wildlife need to be addressed based on a landscape level approach. Crossing structures for wildlife are no good if there is no suitable wildlife habitat nearby. In some cases, this means protecting existing habitat patches close to wildlife crossing opportunities. In other cases, it may mean restoring habitat close to highways or creating suitable corridors between habitat patches and safe crossing opportunities. And while the focus of many highway mitigation measures is with the movements of large wild mammals, we also need to address the needs of smaller species that may not be able to move over long distances. For these species we need food, water, and cover every step of the way as it may take them days or weeks to cross to the other side of the road. In other words, we need a shift from providing safe crossing opportunities for large mammals to restoring habitat connectivity for a wide range of species groups and perhaps even allowing physical ecosystem processes to continue between the two sides of a highway. In summary, road ecology cannot be effective without applying the principles of restoration ecology and landscape ecology. And if habitat restoration is to succeed on a landscape level, restoration and landscape ecology can benefit from road ecology.

Community Restoration in Utqiaġvik, AK

The North Slope Borough of Alaska is nearly the size of Michigan and is classified almost entirely as wetlands, giving “wetland enhancement” a new meaning. Located at the northern-most latitude in the United States, the Native village Utqiaġvik (formerly Barrow) is entirely surrounded by wetlands. The wet permafrost landscape, the mosquitoes it hosts, and the polar bears that occasionally wander onto land, challenge even the most intrepid traveler. The Iñupiaq people have a history of traveling far to camp in the summer to gather fish and wild plants to store for the long winter, but this tradition was mostly lost following the oil boom in the region and a switch to a cash economy. While generations of Iñupiat have subsisted on a diet of mostly meat and fat, plants have always played a special role, though in much smaller quantities than animal-based sources of food. To serve the residents of Utqiaġvik, my crew of local teenagers and I built a unique botanical garden emphasizing edible plants, of which were collected from the surrounding area. The project was meant to support public health, to serve as an Indigenous teaching instrument, and to act as an inspirational and interactive exhibit. The garden encourages people to reacquaint themselves with tundra plants and provides a means for elders who are no longer physically mobile to share their knowledge across generations without having to travel far. It is a place to learn about the plants, and the garden provides an accessible learning space for both locals and visitors to the community.

Speaker bio: Lorene Lynn is a soil scientist and restoration ecologist who specializes in permafrost characterization, tundra rehabilitation, and boreal forest restoration. She primarily works for oil and gas, government, and community clients in the Arctic and for mining, government, and private clients throughout Alaska. Lorene is a federally appointed member and Chair of the Science Technical Advisory Panel (STAP) for the North Slope Science Initiative (NSSI). Previously, she worked for HDR, the NRCS Soil Survey, and the USFWS. Her graduate studies on coastal erosion along the Beaufort Sea Coast of Alaska sparked a career in which she rarely experiences heat, instead working in a parka in the Arctic in the months most people associate with summer. She lives in Palmer, Alaska with her husband and dog. Her two children have launched lives of their own in Alaska.

Interim Reforestation of Soil Stockpiles

Industrial disturbances, whether in the mining or oil and gas sector, typically result in the clearing of forests and stockpiling of surface soils during the development and operational phases of industrial activity. In Alberta, operators are mandated to ensure stockpiles are stable and non-erosive, constructed in order to maximize soil surface area (shallower slopes being optimal) and that weeds or other invasive species are managed appropriately. Management of these stockpiles will be required until final reclamation activities when the facilities are removed, the site is re-contoured and stockpiled soils are spread. Historical (and present) practices include seeding with grasses and use of chemical herbicides to control establishment of noxious weeds.

Temporary reforestation of soil stockpiles, is an alternative, though not widely utilized practice that may better fit the fundamental long-term final reclamation goals in forested settings (restoring a functional forest). Potential benefits of temporary reforestation of stockpiled soil include: long-term erosion control, reduced invasion of weedy vegetation through increased forest cover and shading and increased habitat availability for wildlife. In addition, temporary reforestation is also likely to enhance the root and seed propagule bank and provide coarse woody material final reclamation.

This webinar will present an alternative approach to conventional soil stockpile management, the interim (or temporary) reforestation of soil stockpiles. In 2015, a case study was initiated on 8 hectares of an in-situ facility soil stockpile. An overview of the operational activities and findings during the first four growing seasons will be presented.

Natural Stable Channel Design

Houston and Harris County, Texas have been at the center of numerous national stories regarding disaster-level flooding in recent years. Since the year 2000, Houston has endured 10 storm events greater than the statistically-predicted 100-year precipitation event. The Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) has been responsible for providing flood protection to this vibrant metropolitan area of over 4.6 million people since a special purpose district created by the Texas Legislature in 1937 in response to devastating floods that struck the region in 1929 and 1935. In the 1990’s the HCFCD, in accordance with their statutory mission to “Provide flood damage reduction projects that work, with appropriate regard for community and natural values” began to incorporate the emerging technology of fluvial geomorphology and stream restoration into the development and management of their critical flood control system and infrastructure. Today, the HCFCD applies this naturalistic engineering approach wherever possible in their efforts to meet the ever-increasing flood control needs of this community that is expected to exceed a metropolitan area population of 10 million residents by 2040. This webinar will demonstrate how these efforts have been successful in proving the ability of these methodologies to provide the ultimate solution for meeting flood control, resiliency, and water quality goals for this community. It is hoped that the webinar will inform the participants sufficiently

Diversity is Magic: Emerging issues in selecting appropriate native plant materials

Creating a restoration-based rural economy and reviving traditional ecological knowledge

The webinar will present case study from India of a restoration project that combines the objectives of creating alternate livelihoods for local communities of indigenous peoples based on ecological restoration and at the same time reviving traditional ecological knowledge of indigenous groups whose connect with their natural environment is fast vanishing. The restoration project is being managed by Junglescapes, a non-profit engaged in restoring degraded forests. The project site is in a major tiger reserve in South India which lies in the Western Ghats, a global biodiversity hotspot. Junglescapes received the Full Circle Award in 2017 for its ongoing work with local communities.

A Framework for Climate-smart Restoration

Ecological restoration efforts are being implemented in the context of a rapidly changing climate, which poses a new set of challenges and uncertainty. Climate-smart restoration is the process of enhancing the ecological function of degraded, damaged, or destroyed areas in a manner that makes them resilient to the consequences of climate change. The presentation will provide an overview of Point Blue’s climate-smart restoration framework and demonstrate how it can be used to inform planning and design for various restoration projects, drawing on examples from riparian and wetland systems in California.

Speaker bio: Marian Vernon is the Sierra Meadow Adaptation Leader at Point Blue Conservation Science, where she works with partners to catalyze climate-smart meadow restoration and land conservation in the Sierra Nevada. Her background is in the conservation, policy, management, and governance of public and private lands and wildlife in the western U.S. She received her Masters of Environmental Science degree from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in 2015.

Natural Processes for the Restoration of Drastically Disturbed Sites

Join Dave Polster as he discusses the restoration of drastically disturbed sites using natural processes.Learn how we can take advantage of processes that have developed over millions of years to aid in the restoration of difficult-to-restore sites. How can we develop restoration practices that work with the natural world?

Dave Polster has 43 years of experience in vegetation studies, reclamation, and invasive species management. He graduated from the University of Victoria with his BSc. in 1975 and his MSc. in 1977. He has developed a wide variety of reclamation techniques for mines, industrial developments, steep or unstable slopes, and for the re-establishment of riparian and aquatic habitats.

Rebuilding a house of cards: Restoring the equilibrium in Indonesia’s tropical peatlands

Indonesia’s extensive tropical peatland domes contain a globally critical reservoir of carbon. Their forests have become a final refuge to endangered mammals such orangutans, sun bears and clouded leopards, and provide livelihoods, environmental stability and spiritual-identity to indigenous communities.
These tropical peatlands have become severely and extensively degraded through logging and land conversion for agriculture, both requiring peatland drainage. The degraded peatlands now burn with almost annual frequency. When surface fires transition into the peat, they release toxic gases, large volumes of small particulates, and huge volumes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere – the Asian Haze Crisis.

The Indonesian Government is working to rehabilitate its peatlands, but planted seedlings still die through continued fires and disturbed hydrology. Fire management efforts are often only short-term, and rewetting after drainage is extremely expensive and physically challenging. Local indigenous communities have a deep understanding of the ecology of the system, and want it to see it restored. Poor economic, livelihood, health and education options, and unclear land tenure, however, leave them feeling incapacitated.

Tropical peatlands are an ecosystem dependent on stability and equilibriums. When these are disturbed, the whole system becomes degraded, questionably past its tipping point. Restoring the balance of this equilibrium requires understanding and methods in the biophysical, social, economic and politic environment. In this webinar I will present the balance of these different factors from a case-study perspective of single peat dome: its degradation history, and the restoration efforts of my organisation, The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, BOSF-Mawas Program. I propose that implementing truly inter-disciplinary restoration for Indonesia’s peatlands is rather like building a house of cards.

Speaker – Laura Graham, BOSF-Mawas

Scaling up forest landscape restoration in Canada in an era of cumulative effects and climate change

While the global restoration movement is rapidly gaining momentum, understanding the concept and benefits of forest and landscape restoration (FLR) is paramount to safeguarding the natural capital of Canada’s forests. In the face of increasing cumulative effects, we investigated the opportunities for scaling up FLR efforts in Canadian forests. The pace of industrial natural resource extraction developments (logging, agriculture, mining, and energy sector), and their overlapping in time and space with the impacts of climate change have resulted in ecosystem function and services alteration, as well as changes in natural disturbance regimes (e.g., wildland fire and pests). These dramatic and synergistic changes to environmental, socio-economic and cultural values occurring in the landscape need to be considered in land use planning but are highly variable and uncertain. We suggested that adding FLR to the land …

Selecting native plant material for restoration projects in different ecosystems

Due to loss of natural ecosystems and biodiversity around the world along the past decades, international initiatives are being developed to establish a foundation for the restoration of diverse ecosystems, prioritizing ecosystem biodiversity and resilience while also recognizing impacts on rural livelihoods and carbon storage. As programs have become more refined, a shift from revegetation with available material to using native plant materials of known genetic origin has been underway, and achieving increasing priority at an international level. Through research and collaborative partnerships, on local, regional and international levels, and between public and private sectors, approaches are being developed that addresses the challenges in using native genetic plant material in ecological restoration. Four study cases from different geographic locations and climatic conditions were selected to demonstrate the successes in using native genetic plant material, developing a baseline for native genetic resource management, and meeting challenges according to every ecosystem’s limiting factors. In Jordan’s desert ecosystem a developed native seed strategy has majorly improved seedling quality and post-planting survival rate. In the tropical ecosystem of Guinea Conakry, the major challenge is to identify best seed collection times and seed handling techniques to improve seed germination and propagation of native seedlings through seeds for the restoration of the Bossou corridor. Within Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, an emphasis is being made on the development of a traceability system for native genetic plant material used in restoration projects, considering the genetic variability within native species, starting with Cedrus atlantica. In Lebanon, considering the diverse ecosystems, a scheme for the selection of native plant material is developed within every restoration project, for dryland, riparian or forest ecosystems.

Speaker:

Karma Bouazza received her Bachelor of Science in Agriculture Engineering and her Master of Science in Plant Protection from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. She has worked since 2011 with the U.S. Forest Service International Programs in Lebanon, Jordan, Guinea, Zimbabwe, Morocco and Rwanda. Through research and collaborative partnerships, she has worked on developing approaches that addresses the challenges in using native genetic plant material in ecological restoration in diverse geographic locations and climatic conditions. Currently, she is also leading the Research and Development Component at the Lebanon Reforestation Initiative NGO, aiming at first identifying research gaps throughout the different fields of ecological restoration and wildlife conservation that hinder the sustainability of landscape management.

Moving to Industrial-Scale Coral Habitat Restoration

Jesper Elzinga, Van Oord Dredging and Marine Contractors, talks on ‘The Recovery of Reefs Using Industrial Techniques for Slick Harvesting and Release (RECRUIT)’ followed by Joaquim Garrabou, Spanish Research Council (CSIC), Barcelona on ‘Lessons Learned from Coral Restoration in Shallow and Deep Environments’. There is potential to assist the recovery of impacted coral habitats through marine ecosystem restoration, but can it be achieved at a meaningful scale? This webinar addressed some of the methods that might be used in restoration of coral habitats and their applicability at larger scales.

Fieldwork in the time of COVID-19

Join a panel of practitioners from several realms (governmental, contracting, and non-profit) to learn how they are adapting field work plans to reduce risks to practitioners and community members in the time of COVID 19. As we are all learning and adapting to this strange new world together, we’ll wrap up with time for participants to share their own ideas and ask questions of panelists and each other.

Speakers include the following SER-NW chapter board members: Jeff Barna, Ben Peterson, and Regina Wandler.

University of Montana COVID-19 Guidelines for Off-campus Field Research

Guidelines for off-campus field research developed by the University of Montana (as of May 4, 2020).

Guidelines for volunteers and volunteer organizations during COVID-19 outbreak in Washington

During this national emergency, we understand individuals who are not suffering from the coronavirus may want to help. However, all volunteer activities must follow critical health and safety protocols so we can protect volunteers, residents, clients, and agencies. This document provides general guidelines for volunteers and volunteer organizations and may be useful is developing organization-specific best practices.

Principles of Riverscape Health & Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration

In this webinar we will immerse you deeper into reading riverscapes; specifically, we will introduce the principles of riverscape health. These principles will be cast in a light to help you better recognize impairments, articulate the scope of what’s been lost, and realistically target recovery potential. Then we will introduce low-tech process-based restoration (PBR) as a means of addressing structural starvation so pervasive among many riverscapes today. We will briefly highlight six principles of low-tech PBR, which help guide restoration planning, design and implementation and more critically place our actions as ecological restoration practitioners in context. While we will focus on examples of these principles in practice for riverine and riparian ecosystmes, the mechanistic and functional focus has merit in cross-over to restoration of other ecosystems as well.

Speaker bio: Joe Wheaton is an Associate Professor Utah State and a fluvial geomorphologist with over eighteen years of experience in river restoration. Joe’s research is focused on better understanding the dynamics of riverscapes, how such fluvial processes shape instream and riparian habitats, and how biota modulate and amplify those processes. Joe o-founded the Restoration Consortium at USU and runs the Ecogeomorphology & Topographic Analysis Lab in USU’s Department of Watershed Science. Joe is also the lead author of the Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration of Riverscapes Design Manual and a principle and co-founder of a design-build restoration firm, Anabranch Solutions.

Parks and Recreation Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) COVID-19 Best Practices Manual

Coronavirus safety protocols developed the City of Missoula (Montana, USA), including for fieldwork done by city staff in maintaining Missoula parks and open spaces.

COVID-19 Work Protocols – Garden Cycles LLC

Safety protocols from Garden City, LLC, an organization in Washington (USA) focused on native plant restoration and invasive species control.

Five Valley Land Trust COVID-19 Phase II Protocol

Guidelines from Five Valleys Land Trust (Montana, USA) on COVID-19 safety protocols.

Modo de Operación en situación de pandemia COVID19 – Parque Nacional Torres del Paine (Magallanes, Chile)

COVID-19 fieldwork and operation guidelines for the ecological restoration work being done in Parque Nacional Torres del Paine (Magallanes, Chile). Document includes guidelines in Spanish and English.

COVID-19 Fieldwork Safety Plan – SWCA

COVID-19 Field Safety Protocols from SWCA COVID-19 Task Force (released in June 2020) including guidelines for pre-fieldwork, prepping and cleaning vehicles, communal living, personal hygiene, and post-work communication.

COVID-19 Fieldwork Guidelines with Native American Community

These COVID-19 guidelines focus on fieldwork preparations that include a 2-week quarantine and working with a Native American/Indian community. The author has removed identifying information about the project and wishes them to be anonymous.

COVID-19 Protection Plan – Skagit Land Trust

Skagit Land Trust prioritizes the well-being of our community, including our staff, volunteers,
contractors, partners, landowners and members. This protection plan lays out the protocols we will
follow during the Washington Stay Home order in response to the spread of COVID 19 – this is the version of the plan shared with volunteers.

SER-WC Webinar: M.Sc. Projects

Join three recent graduates of the SFU/BCIT M.Sc. program as they discuss their Applied Research Projects. These projects are the central part of the M.Sc. Program.

Abby Wu – Assessing the potential impact of English ivy (Hedera helix) on the arthropod community of Stanley Park.

Shantanu Dutt – Biological Soil Crust for Reclamation of Mine Tailings.

Kate O’Neill – A climate adaptation plan: identifying thermal refugia for salmonids in the Tsolum River, BC.