Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
16
Challenges for ecological theory
James Aronson and Jelte van Andel
16.1 Introduction and overview
workaday definitions of ecological restoration, and
how it fits into a broader picture of environmental
management and problem-solving. This chapter aims
to address these questions.
Whereas we now have some information on how
different kinds of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems
actually develop and interact over time, we still have
many difficulties in predicting how they, in specific
cases, can be expected to respond to intentional
interventions, different levels of exploitation, and
various drivers of local change such as global climate
change, biodiversity loss and biological invasions.
Thus, as Bradshaw (1987) and Harper (1987) have
argued, restoration can provide a crucial test for eco-
logical models and theories. Additionally, restoration
ecology is just one part of something bigger and indeed
unprecedented: that is, an international, transdiscip-
linary effort addressing sustainability in a scientific
fashion (Kates
et al.
2001). The 'science of ecosystem
services' and, more generally, a 'pragmatic ecological
science' (Palmer
et al.
2004) are also both begin-
ning to emerge and take shape, in response to the
gigantic and unprecedented ecological and environ-
mental problems facing us today as a global society.
Central and vital to all these efforts is the integration
of ecology and economics, taking full cognizance of
varying social and cultural values and constraints
occurring in each different country. Trans-disciplinary
and holistic evaluation also are needed to facilitate
the planning, practice and coordination of ecological
restoration and related activities at national, regional
and international levels or scales. The need to under-
stand complexity, and to embrace uncertainty and
unpredictability in the development of complex
adaptive systems, is becoming more widely recognized,
Restoration ecology is in full bloom. The number and
percentage of scholarly papers reporting on eco-
logical restoration research published in the
Journal
of Applied Ecology
has grown steadily over the past
40 years (Ormerod 2003). In the last 10 years espe-
cially there has been an expansion - not to say an
explosion - of scientific and popular articles, news-
letters, websites and books on the subject, all around
the world, and in all parts of Europe. This intellectual
and academic flowering of the science of restoration
ecology is the reflection of a parallel evolution in the
practice
of ecological restoration in nations around
the world. Public policy and new legislation have led
to budgets being created, and full-time planning and
administrative departments becoming established, to
work on ecological restoration. Germany, the UK, the
Netherlands, Spain, Canada and USA are among the
countries taking the lead in the northern hemisphere,
while South Africa, Costa Rica, Australia, New
Zealand and India, among others, take the lead in
the geopolitical south. The
Society for Ecological
Restoration International
(SER International), which
brings together scientists and non-scientists of all sorts,
now has members from over 35 countries. SER Inter-
national's Science and Policy Working Group (SER
2002; www.ser.org) has produced the first Primer of
ecological restoration, providing criteria for distin-
guishing this discipline from other endeavours of
environmental improvement, and standards for the
evaluation of ecological restoration and the attributes
of so-called restored ecosystems. Yet the scientific field
of restoration ecology still has a long way to go in
clarifying the basic concepts, models, hypotheses and
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