The biodiversity and ecosystem service contributions and trade-offs of forest restoration approaches

Forest restoration is being scaled up globally to deliver critical ecosystem services and biodiversity benefits; however, there is a lack of rigorous comparison of cobenefit delivery across different restoration approaches. Through global synthesis, we used 25,950 matched data pairs from 264 studies...

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Published in:Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 2022-05, Vol.376 (6595), p.839-844
Main Authors: Hua, Fangyuan, Bruijnzeel, L Adrian, Meli, Paula, Martin, Philip A, Zhang, Jun, Nakagawa, Shinichi, Miao, Xinran, Wang, Weiyi, McEvoy, Christopher, Peña-Arancibia, Jorge Luis, Brancalion, Pedro H S, Smith, Pete, Edwards, David P, Balmford, Andrew
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biodiversity
Climate change
Climate change mitigation
Conservation of Natural Resources - methods
Ecosystem
Ecosystem services
Ecosystems
Environmental restoration
Erosion control
Forests
Plantations
Reforestation
Restoration
Soil erosion
Trees
Water
Water management
Water supply
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Summary:Forest restoration is being scaled up globally to deliver critical ecosystem services and biodiversity benefits; however, there is a lack of rigorous comparison of cobenefit delivery across different restoration approaches. Through global synthesis, we used 25,950 matched data pairs from 264 studies in 53 countries to assess how delivery of climate, soil, water, and wood production services, in addition to biodiversity, compares across a range of tree plantations and native forests. Benefits of aboveground carbon storage, water provisioning, and especially soil erosion control and biodiversity are better delivered by native forests, with compositionally simpler, younger plantations in drier regions performing particularly poorly. However, plantations exhibit an advantage in wood production. These results underscore important trade-offs among environmental and production goals that policy-makers must navigate in meeting forest restoration commitments.
ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.abl4649