Precision restoration: fostering forest recovery in the 21st century
“Forest restoration is currently a primary objective in environmental management policies at a global scale, to the extent that impressive initiatives and commitments have been launched to plant billions of trees. However, resources are limited and the success of any restoration effort should be maximized. Thus, restoration programs should seek to guarantee that what is planted today will become an adult tree in the future, a simple fact that, however, usually receives little attention,” state Jorge Castro, Fernando Morales-Rueda, Francisco B. Navarro, Magnus Löf, Giorgio Vacchiano, and Domingo Alcaraz-Segura in their paper Precision restoration: a necessary approach to foster forest recovery in the 21st century, published in the journal Restoration Ecology in May 2021. They are advocating for the need to focus restoration efforts on an individual plant level to increase establishment success while reducing negative side effects by using an approach that they term “precision forest restoration” (PFR). What PFR means and what the implications for restoration approaches are you can read in the article.
Giorgio Vacchiano, one of the authors, is leading SUPERB’s Demo area – Po Valley – SUPERB (forest-restoration.eu).
Castro, J., Morales‐Rueda, F., Navarro, F. B., Löf, M., Vacchiano, G., & Alcaraz‐Segura, D. (2021). Precision restoration: A necessary approach to foster forest recovery in the 21st century. Restoration Ecology, 29(7), e13421. https://doi.org/10.1111/rec.13421
Featured image: Bark beetle damage in Germany (photo: Gesche Schifferdecker)