Resource Database

SER-RM Workshop: Practical Tools and Sample Designs for Ecological Restoration Monitoring

These three presentations make up SER-RM’s recent three-day workshop: Practical Tools and Sample Designs for Ecological Restoration Monitoring. On day one (May 4), Dr. Tim Robinson will lay out a path for avoiding failure in environmental monitoring related to ecosystem restoration and a framework for the necessities of a solid sampling plan. On day two (May 5), Dr. Blair Robertson will discuss the benefits of spatially balanced sampling designs for environmental resources. On day three (May 6), Mr. Sam Cox from the US Department of Interior – Bureau of Land Management – Wyoming State Office will discuss and show examples of how to use remote sensing with free, open-source software.

SER Webinar: Enabling factors to scale up forest landscape restoration

A study of 10 long term and large scale forest restoration initiatives reveals some of the key governance and economic factors that support restoration. This WWF and IUFRO study entitled “Enabling factors to scale up forest landscape restoration: the roles of governance and economics” highlights the key factors at the national or sub-national scale that motivate the initiation of forest restoration, enable its implementation at scale and sustain it. The report features examples of how these enabling factors have played out in different countries, and finds that approaches have to be context-specific to be successful.

Speaker: Stephanie Mansourian has been an environmental consultant for the last 16 years and is also a research associate with Geneva University (Switzerland). Her work in the last 25 years has spanned several environmental topics, including forest restoration, environmental governance, protected areas, sustainability among others. She was at the forefront of the development of forest landscape restoration (FLR) at the time when she was managing WWF’s related programme. Since then, and based on her observations of FLR programmes and projects, she carried out her PhD specifically on governance challenges related to FLR. In her work, she takes an integrated approach and seeks to span disciplines wherever possible. As a consultant her clients include NGOs, conventions, UN agencies and foundations. Her voluntary commitments include her board membership with the Society for Ecological Restoration, and her role as deputy coordinator of the IUFRO Task Force on “Transforming forest landscapes for future climates and human well-being”. She has published three books and authored several articles in peer reviewed journals.

SER-NW Inclusion in Ecological Restoration: Reimagining Restoration

What does inclusion in ecological restoration look like? How would it feel to truly welcome, celebrate, and protect marginalized members of our communities and ecosystems? In this ecosystem of social change, we must initiate and continue timely conversations surrounding race, gender, class, ability, ageism, and violence in the science and practice of ecological restoration. To disentangle restoration from social injustices, we are obligated to openly reflect on the racist lineage of conservation, uncover mutual interests in solidarity efforts, explore our own racial development, commit to training about implicit bias and interrogate how our institutions collude with BIPOC erasure, heteropatriarchy and extractive capitalism. Implications for Practice include decolonizing our media consumption/presentation, shifting language, mapping our roles in social change, evaluating people’s access to restoration benefits, and elevating untold stories. Michael Yadrick (CERP) endeavors to revive forest ecosystems and our relationship with nature in a warming world.

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.

SER Webinar: Ecological Restoration in the Context of Environmental Racism

Jacqueline Patterson is the Senior Director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program, and joins us to help establish the basis for a conversation about how those of us in the field of ecological restoration can begin to address the issue of environmental racism.

SER-WC Webinar: MADW Monarch Butterfly Habitat Restoration

As part of SER-Western Canada’s ongoing webinar series, we’re very pleased to have Dr. Jaramillo Lopez join us to talk about the plight of the Monarch butterflies that overwinter near Morelia, Mexico. This webinar will include information and resources about what you can do to support Monarch butterflies (or your other local pollinators). We encourage all attendees to take some time in the week following the webinar to plant or seed native species that support Monarchs and other pollinators, and then let us know about how it went! Together, we can protect this beautiful species for generations to come

SER-RM Webinar: Fuels Mitigation in Wyoming

Nick Zaczek shares his insights into fuel mitigation strategies in Wyoming. This webinar is part of SER-RM’s ongoing Wildfire Restoration series

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.