Resource Database

Coral Reef Restoration Guidelines

Restoration activities are becoming more and more popular across the world, in an attempt to restore/sustain the function and services associated with coral reef ecosystems. It should be noted that these efforts are unlikely to be effective as a stand-alone action, they should always be done as part of a larger integrated management strategy.

This website collects some of the most recent guidelines on coral reef restoration, including webinars and technical documents.

SER-Europe Webinar: State of Ecological Restoration in Hungary

Join Dr. Melinda Halassy, of the Centre for Ecological Research, to learn about the state of ecological restoration in Hungary.

This is the second of a 2021 webinar series by SER Europe – every 2nd Wednesday of the month at 18hr CET a member of SER-E will lecture us on the State of Ecological Restoration on her/his Country, followed by a Q&A and a conclusion on best practices and further research + innovation networking.

Failing Forward and Lessons Learned

We often hear about restoration success stories – but what about projects that struggled or failed? During this webinar we will heard two practitioners whose projects didn’t go as planned, and the critical insights they learned over more than a decade. The webinar will focus on two projects from Florida and Texas, USA. Jack Putz will explore what he learned from a multi-decade process of trying to apply what he was teaching and researching to a longleaf pine savanna on his own property in Gainsville, Florida. Diane Humes will discuss her work on the Mason Park Stormwater Treatment Wetland, an experiment to address those impaired water quality, flooding, and habitat loss in Houston, Texas. The project broke ground in 2005 as part of Project Brays, a massive flood control project. Looking back 15 years of erosion, sedimentation, invasive species, and trash, how has the wetland fared and what is its future?

International Seed Standards Launch, Introductory Webinar and International Panel Discussion

This webinar provides an opportunity to learn from some of the authors of the Native Seed Standards. This is your chance to find out about the Seed Standards and what they mean for you.

Speakers: Kingsley Dixon, Peggy Olwel, Gil Waibel, Simone Pedrini. Panelists: Kingsley Dixon, Simon Pedrini, Peggy Olwell, Nancy Shaw, Olga Kildisheva, Stephanie Frischie, Gil Waibel, Danilo Ignacio Urzedo.

International Standards for Native Seeds in Ecological Restoration

Restoration practitioners must increasingly incorporate seed procurement models and seed use planning early in project development, despite insufficient guidance about what are reasonable expectations for the sourcing and use of native seeds. This open access issue of Restoration Ecology presents a series of articles examining each key step in the native seed supply chain, and provides a framework for the “standards” that need to be applied to native seed batches if the native seed supply chain is to achieve the levels of reliability and transparency required. These Standards provide seed buyers, end users, and funding bodies with a level of confidence and reliability in the sourcing of quality native seeds, and a pathway toward global best practice in native seed use.

Articles focus on:

• Seed planning, sourcing and procurement
• Collection and procurement of native seeds
• Ensuring seed quality
• Seed storage
• Dormancy and germination
• Seed enhancement
• Seed use in the field
• International principles and standards for the use of native seeds

Generation Restoration – SER Student Associations

SER has 19 student associations around the world. This webinar will focus on two associations – UNED Costa Rica Student Network for Ecological Restoration and SER-Brigham Young University (United States). Wilmar Ovares (UNED Student Network) and Travis Sowards (SER-BYU) will talk about how they started their student associations, the projects and activities the groups have worked on, and where they see the groups going in the future.

Wilmar Ovares is a professor in the Management of Natural Resources Program at UNED Costa Rica, which is part of the School of Natural and Exact Sciences. In 2015, he co-founded the UNED Costa Rica Student Network for Ecological Restoration. UNED has 37 campuses in Costa Rica and is one of the most important  universities in the Central American region.

Travis Sowards is the current SER Board of Directors Student Director. Travis earned his BS in Forestry, with a certificate in International Forestry and Conservation, from Northern Arizona University. He served for ten years on US Navy submarines before beginning work as a Natural Resources Specialist with the US Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Research Station. In 2017 he began working on his PhD in Wildlife & Wildlands Conservation at Brigham Young University. He founded the Brigham Young University SER Student Association, and served as the president of this thriving and growing student club from 2019-2020.

Hold Back the Snowpack

This short (11-minute) film highlights the ecological restoration work of the Big Hole Watershed Committee, a grassroots, consensus-based non-profit with an accomplished 25-year program focused on improving water quality and quantity for all water users.   Climate projections predict earlier snowmelts for Western Montana and hotter summers, making snowpack driven moisture and increasingly important and fragile resource.  Holding back snowpack while respecting water rights and habitat needs of fish and wildlife is critical for late-season water supplies.  This film demonstrates techniques to achieve those results, by taking cues from flood irrigators and beaver, and by treating soil as a battery that needs charging with water..

Relevance for the Short Term Action Plan for Ecosystem Restoration:
Demonstrates a focus for ecosystem restoration in arid mountain environments dominated by snowmelt-driven moisture.

Positioning scientists as relevant and respectful partners in restoration

Research scientists can contribute in many different ways as collaborative partners in ecological restoration, for example by building knowledge of ecological dynamics or by developing tools to support decision-making. In such collaborations, we (hopefully) recognize that scientists, partners, and other stakeholders hold different knowledge, values, and priorities regarding the ecological and social context surrounding restoration. In principle, this diversity can be an asset, leading to more innovative, effective, or inclusive outcomes. But in practice, outcomes depend on how such differences are acknowledged and navigated. In this talk, we begin by examining positionality as a key factor that influences – often in tacit ways – whose knowledge and values gain greater authority over others. Positionality refers to the social stance of individuals relative to one another, and includes dimensions such as identity, status, and power. To ensure that contributions from scientific research are both relevant and respectful toward other partners, we need to be mindful of how the authority of science is wielded when processes for engagement are chosen, as well as during the engagement activities themselves. Next, we describe an ongoing collaboration between an interdisciplinary team of scientists and a group of stakeholders who are all stewards of globally rare Maritime Live Oak forests in the southeastern United States, yet all have different stances on the appropriateness of various forest restoration strategies. Invoking principles from structured decision-making (SDM) and participatory action research (PAR), we discuss the processes we adopted for appreciating stewards’ perspectives and values, strengthening the relevance of our contributions, and also avoiding a hegemonic position in the partnership. SDM and PAR offer complementary ideas for building relevant and respectful partnerships, yet creativity, humility, and intentionality on the part of scientists are still required to create fair, pluralistic engagement processes. How can scientists cultivate these skills and learn about effective modes of transdisciplinary engagement, when it is still rarely covered in academic training? In the last part of this talk, we discuss our efforts underway to synthesize useful practices and resources into an open-access training curriculum for students and research scientists. Restoration initiatives provide a diverse portfolio of successes, train wrecks, and on-the-ground wisdom, from which we can learn and discover new approaches. We invite webinar participants to share ideas, reflections, and experiences to help advance toward that common goal.

Speaker: Dr. Elizabeth King (Odum School of Ecology and Warnell School of Forestry & Natural Resources, University of Georgia). Lizzie King is an interdisciplinary scientist whose research focuses on restoration ecology and social-ecological systems science. Her long-standing research in African pastoralist systems bridges hydrology, ecology, and anthropology to understand linkages between land degradation and livelihoods, especially the social and environmental conditions that affect pastoralists’ decisions and abilities to adapt their livelihoods. Dr. King also studies the decision-making challenges that arise in natural resource management when stakeholders have divergent perceptions, values, and objectives. In recent years, her work has increasingly focused on pedagogy and training for interdisciplinary and academic/non-academic research partnerships.

Funding Ecosystem Restoration in Europe

Restoring ecosystems can increase biodiversity, safeguard the ecosystem services on which people and nature depend, and contribute to climate change mitigation. 2020 and beyond brings opportunities for significant scaling up of ecosystem restoration. Ambitions such as theEuropean Green Deal (2019), the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 (2020), the EU Nature Restoration Plan (2019), and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030), present a tremendous opportunity to bring about transformational change.

In order to be successful, decision making must consider current and past ecosystem restoration activities, the amount and focus of past and current funding, and the range of actors involved. Until now, this information has been  unavailable. In response to this information gap, UNEP-WCMC and FFI compiled a database of over 400 ecosystem restoration projects within Europe. This report accompanies the database, and contains analysis of what was funded, where, by whom, how much, and for what purpose. You can access the database here: https://restorationfunders.com/

Developing Long-Term Viable Stream Restoration

Over the past decade, Mark Briggs (Restoration Ecologist, Tucson, Arizona) and co-editor, W.R. Osterkamp (retired, USGS), along with 55 stream restoration experts from Australia, Mexico, and U.S., have collaborated on a stream restoration guidebook entitled Renewing Our Rivers: Stream Corridor Restoration in Dryland Regions. The guidebook highlights the main steps in developing a restoration response for damaged stream ecosystems that will have the most likelihood to be successful and viable in the long-term. As part of this live webinar, Mark will introduce us to the guidebook, authors, case studies and lessons gained from stream restoration experiences in Australia, Mexico, and U.S. The flow of the presentation will follow the guidebook’s chapters, which reflect the arc of developing a thoughtful and long-term viable stream restoration response and include such themes as:

Developing realistic and thoughtful restoration goals and objectives

Assessing the hydrologic and physical conditions of a drainage basin

Adapting your stream restoration project to climate change

Quantifying and securing environmental flow

Implementing your restoration project

Monitoring and evaluation

Going long: considerations to ensure your stream corridor restoration effort continues to grow

Speaker: Mark Briggs, M.S. is a stream restoration ecologist with over 25 years of experience restoring rivers across the western U.S. and northern Mexico, including the Rio Grande/Bravo, Rio Conchos, Colorado River and its delta, Santa Cruz River, Little Colorado River, Gila River. Main themes of his work include assessment of river biophysical conditions, on-the-ground rehabilitation, climate change, environmental flow, socioeconomic benefits of restoration, and monitoring. Briggs also conducts workshops on river restoration in both Mexico and the United States. Until recently (January 2019), he was a Senior Program Officer with the World Wildlife Fund’s Fresh Water and Rio Grande/Bravo Programs where he spent 12 years developing a bi-national response to bringing back the Rio Conchos and Rio Grande/Rio Bravo in west Texas, northern Chihuahua and Coahuila. He currently works on rivers in southern Arizona with RiversEdge West. His technical publications include a book on developing river restoration projects and numerous articles on restoration, monitoring, and natural resource research. He is co-editor on “Renewing Our Rivers: Stream Corridor Restoration in Dryland Regions,” which will be published by the University of Arizona Press in Fall of 2020. Briggs has been on the editorial board of the international journal Restoration Ecology for over a decade. Other than working on rivers, Briggs can often be found hiking, biking, floating rivers, restoring his house (a form of Covid therapy), and writing.

Updated International Principles & Standards for the Practice of Ecological Restoration

The second edition of the International Standards for the Practice of Ecological Restoration was released in September 2019. This groundbreaking publication provides updated and expanded guidance on the practice of ecological restoration, clarifies the breadth of ecological restoration and allied environmental repair activities, and includes ideas and input from a diverse international group of restoration scientists and practitioners. This webinar will walk participants through changes to to the Standards, key concepts, and applying tools like the restoration wheel.

Calculating the Value of 4 Returns of Large-scale Holistic Landscape Restoration

That the world’s landscapes and ecosystems are degrading at an unprecedented pace is beyond question. A long-term and systemic approach to landscape restoration can generate monetary value for multiple stakeholders at the same time.

We are pleased to announce a new publication which calculates the monetary value of restoring landscapes. The preliminary method is developed by Commonland with support of KPMG.

Legal Framework to Protect Aquatic Habitats in Saskatchewan

Join Alex Blais-Montpetit (MEnv, CAN-CISEC, EPt) as he discusses the regulation of land development activities in Saskatchewan using Aquatic Habitat Protection Permits, and how this legal framework mitigates impacts to aquatic habitats.

Water Crisis: Lessons Learned

Join South Africa’s Water Research Commission (WRC) as they discuss the challenges associated with water security in the Western Cape region and around the country. Hear about how they have overcome the difficulties posed by the recent devastating drought.

Building a Business Case for Marine Ecosystem Restoration

This webinar series, focussed on marine ecosystem restoration, provides fresh perspectives on how we can benefit from better planning for a healthy marine environment. The fourth webinar will focus on two important topics: Dr Richard Unsworth, Seagrass Ecosystems Research Group, University of Swansea, Wales. The importance of restoring seagrass meadows for global fisheries production Prof Per-Olav Moksnes, Department of Marine Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Seagrass loss and restoration – implications for the value of carbon and nitrogen stocks

The Short Term Action Plan on Ecosystem Restoration of the UN CBD

The UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), adopted at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, is the main global agreement regarding biodiversity, with near-universal membership. Its provisions are implemented at the national level, following 10-year plans and targets to achieve the 2050 Vision of “Living in Harmony with Nature”. At their 13th Conference in 2016, the parties to the CBD adopted the Short Term Action Plan on Ecosystem Restoration (STAPER), a flexible framework of 24 steps for the implementation of ecosystem restoration at the national scale. Last year, in partnership with SER and thanks to the financial support from the Korea Forest Service, the Secretariat of the CBD launched the “STAPER Companion”, a publication and webpage that presents a synthesis of knowledge and policy from restoration science in support of the activities of the plan. The Companion also includes a selection of resources and tools that can be useful in the implementation of these activities, presented through SER’s Restoration Resource Center. This webinar provides further detail of the context of restoration under the CBD, an overview of the activities of the STAPER and explain how to access and submit relevant resources on the companion webpage for each of these activities.

SER Webinar: Invader impact on soil ecosystems – what every restoration practitioner should know

Plant invasions cause dramatic shifts in plant communities and ecosystem processes. While these changes are obvious aboveground, less is known about changes belowground.  Focusing on the most significant invaders in our area in the Intermountain West of the United States, this seminar will highlight how spotted knapweed (Centaurea stoebe), leafy spurge (Euphorbia esula), cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) and sulfur cinquefoil (Potentilla recta) alter soil microbial communities and nutrient cycles, and what the consequences of these shifts might be for restoration.

Speaker: Dr. Ylva Lekberg is a soil ecologist at MPG Ranch and an adjunct professor at University of Montana. Her research focuses on structural and functional shifts in soil ecosystems associated with plant invasions, and how these changes may affect restoration success. Prior to her work in invasion biology, Ylva explored the role of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in subsistence farmers’ fields in Sub-Saharan Africa, coastal grasslands in Denmark and geothermal areas in Yellowstone.

A Manager’s Guide to Coral Reef Restoration and Planning

A Manager’s Guide to Coral Reef Restoration Planning and Design supports the needs of reef managers seeking to begin restoration or assess their current restoration program. The Guide is aimed at reef resource managers and conservationists, along with everyone who plans, implements, and monitors restoration activities.

Through a six-step, adaptive management planning process, the Guide helps managers gather relevant data, ask critical questions, and have important conversations about restoration in their location. The process set out in the Guide leads to the creation of a Restoration Action Plan. Hallmarks of the process include the iterative nature of the planning cycle and ways to consider climate change, such that we learn and improve restoration efforts that can also meet long-term goals in a warming world. The first four steps of the Guide’s planning cycle focus on goal-based planning and design of restoration interventions. The final two steps discuss considerations for full-scale implementation and long-term monitoring.

Prairie Reconstruction: Seed Mix Design and First Year Management

There is an emerging role for large ag conservation programs (CRP) to address more complex ecological issues using native vegetation, but resources to implement these programs are increasingly constrained. How can conservation programs achieve greater impact with limited resources, and what ecological benefits are provided per unit project cost? In this talk, we explore how seed mix design and establishment management influence cost-effectiveness and the provision of ecological benefits. Using results from a field experiment in Iowa, we show how balancing grass-to-forb ratio in seed mixes can promote multifunctionality and cost-effectiveness in prairie reconstructions, and how repeated first year mowing accelerates the provision of ecological benefits.

Justin Meissen leads the Research and Restoration Program at the Tallgrass Prairie Center.  Justin’s focus is on implementing restoration research and demonstration projects, developing training seminars, and developing technical materials. He has a PhD in Conservation Biology from the University of Minnesota and a BS in Integrative Biology from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Justin has worked professionally in restoration ecology and botany from North Carolina to California with The Nature Conservancy, The Audubon Society, and other non-profits and environmental contractors. His past work evaluated the risks of repeated, intensive seed harvest from native tallgrass prairies to supply large-scale prairie restoration. Justin’s current research interests concentrate on issues of increasing cost-effectiveness and outcome certainty in prairie reconstructions.

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.

Small Dam Removal: Lessons Learned from 20 Years of Dam Removal in Massachusetts

Regulations and funding sources for river restoration vary considerably across each of the 50 United States of America.  In Massachusetts, a state with over 3,000 dams, dam removal has been employed as a means to restore riverine ecological processes and eliminate public safety liabilities since around 1999. Over the last 20 years, more than 60 dams have been removed in the state with approximately 50 of those involving the state’s Division of Ecological Restoration. This presentation will describe the evolution of the practice of dam removal in Massachusetts including lessons learned, ecological and community benefits realized, and the goals and challenges for expanding the practice in the future.

SER Webinar: Thornforest Restoration Along the Lower Rio Grande

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s (USFWS) South Texas National Wildlife Refuge Complex facilitates conservation within the subtropical 4-county delta of the Rio Grande River, adjacent to northeastern Mexico. Habitat restoration is a key component for conservation here as land conversion to agriculture and urban development has led to more than 90% of the region’s natural cover being lost in the past century. Historically, much of this cover was a species-diverse Tamaulipan thornforest and most of the region’s remaining mature forest fragments are now under the stewardship of public agencies like USFWS. In order to re-establish connectivity between these fragments USFWS began a sustained effort at thornforest restoration on adjacent croplands in the 1980’s. As restoration has continued over the past 40 years approaches have been modified, particularly to meet objectives relating to federally listed endangered species (e.g., ocelot, Leopardus pardalis) recovery. Over time, the restoration program’s efforts have yielded a strong support network of partners and a foundation on which different restoration methodologies have been tested. More recently, concerns over how well restoration syncs with regional climate change projections have underscored the need to develop methodologies that will facilitate resilience in the thornforest ecosystem. To this end, USFWS and American Forests have partnered since 2018 to develop a “drought resilience” strategy that includes development of modified planting designs. This collaboration has now produced a pilot restoration project that will serve as the basis for ongoing adaptation and evaluation of this new strategy. We are hopeful that these efforts will provide some long-term answers for conservation within the Rio Grande delta landscape.

Speakers: 

Kimberly-Wahl Villarreal is the plant ecologist for the South Texas National Wildlife Refuge Complex (STRC) headquartered in Alamo, Texas. She manages thornforest restoration projects across the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildife Refuge and Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, including a Fish and Wildlife Service operated native plant nursery. In addition, she addresses issues facing federally endangered plants in the borderland region and invasive species management across the STRC.

Jon Dale is American Forests’ senior manager for forest restoration in Texas’ Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) and is the chair of the Thornforest Conservation Partnership, a coalition of agency, non-profit, research and industry stakeholders working toward a unified goal of biodiversity conservation in the LRGV’s 4-county area. Jon has 20 years of experience in planning and implementing ecological restoration and natural resource monitoring projects throughout Texas, the US and the neotropics, while working with a wide range of conservation-based and agricultural non-profits, agencies, universities and environmental consulting firms.

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.