A shared understanding of forest landscapes is the foundation for restoration

A shared understanding of forest landscapes is the foundation for restoration

Subject : Environment

Section:

Context: An integral part of nature-based solutions is landscape restoration, specifically Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR).

Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR):

• A landscape approach to forest restoration would try to achieve objectives that support a wide range of stakeholders as well as social, ecological, and economic elements within the defined forest landscape.
• This is different from afforestation and reforestation activities, which has the simple objective of increasing green cover or restoring green cover.
• Landscape restoration is the process of regaining ecological functionality and improving human welfare across deforested or degraded forest landscapes.
• Forest landscape restoration seeks to involve communities in the process of designing and executing mutually advantageous interventions for the upgradation of landscapes
• Forest landscapes have been receiving special attention in the last few years as they are unique in addressing the ‘triple crisis’ which the natural environment is facing today: the climate crisis, environmental pollution, and biodiversity loss.

Ecological restoration is the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed.

Ecosystems are dynamic communities of plants, animals, and microorganisms interacting with their physical environment as a functional unit.

These communities can be damaged, degraded, or destroyed by human activity.

• Damage refers to an acute and obvious harmful impact upon an ecosystem such as selective logging, road building, poaching, or invasions of non-native species.
• Degradation refers to chronic human impacts resulting in the loss of biodiversity and the disruption of an ecosystem’s structure, composition, and functionality. Examples include: long-term grazing impacts, long-term over fishing or hunting pressure, and persistent invasions by non-native species.
• Destruction is the most severe level of impact, when degradation or damage removes all macroscopic life and commonly ruins the physical environment. Ecosystems are destroyed by such activities as land clearing, urbanization, coastal erosion, and mining.
• Ecological restoration seeks to initiate or accelerate ecosystem recovery following damage, degradation, or destruction.
• Restoration practitioners do not carry out the actual work of ecosystem recovery. Rather, they create the conditions needed for recovery so the plants, animals, and microorganisms can carry out the work of recovery themselves. Assisting recovery can be as simple as removing an invasive species or reintroducing a lost species or a lost function (like fire); or as complex as altering landforms, planting vegetation, changing the hydrology, and reintroducing wildlife.
• The goal of ecological restoration is to return a degraded ecosystem to its historic trajectory, not its historic condition. The ecosystem may not necessarily recover to its former state since contemporary ecological realities, including global climate change, may cause it to develop along an altered trajectory, just as these same realities may have changed the trajectory of nearby undisturbed ecosystems. History plays an important role in restoration, but contemporary conditions must also be taken into consideration.