Restoration: opportunities and limitations in sustainable land use

The work will strengthen sustainable land use and contribute to well-functioning ecosystems through knowledge-based nature restoration. Today, significant resources are invested in the restoration of, among other things, bogs, forests and cultural landscapes. At the same time, we still know too little about how well restoration measures work over time. An important reason is inadequate monitoring and evaluation. There is therefore a need for better methods to assess whether restoration actually leads to the desired results.

The work further builds on the promising ORBA method, which makes it possible to assess the likelihood of successful restoration early in the restoration process. We will also develop concrete recommendations for how restoration projects can be monitored and evaluated, and how to ensure that restoration takes into account both ecological and social factors.

Methods: The work will combine vegetation mapping and field surveys, analyses of existing, long-term vegetation datasets, literature studies and interviews with relevant stakeholders.

Tasks

1. Develop better methods for assessing restoration success: We will analyze existing long-term datasets to investigate how different characteristics of the dataset affect the assessment of restoration success. We will also investigate whether long-term results can be predicted from observations made early in the restoration process. 

2. Adopt simplified monitoring criteria: We will develop and test a simplified version of monitoring criteria and integrate these into existing programs for monitoring restoration measures. 

3. Identify measures that increase the chance of successful restoration: We will investigate methods and approaches that can increase the likelihood that restoration projects will achieve their ecological goals. 

4. Develop recommendations for restoration work: Based on the results, we will develop recommendations for: monitoring restoration projects, improving restoration methods, and how to reduce damage to nature through improved planning and processes in development projects, which in turn can strengthen social legitimacy.  

5. Disseminate knowledge and results: The results will be disseminated through a scientific report, four scientific articles and a popular science article.