OOS 10

Toward Prediction in the Restoration of Biodiversity

Restoration ecology holds great promise for promoting biodiversity in damaged ecosystems, yet achieving this promise has been hampered by a lack of predictable outcomes. In particular, seemingly similar restoration practices may result in substantial variation in community diversity or composition and we generally lack understanding of the processes that lead to this variation. This Organized Oral Session will explore the alignment of restoration ecology with contemporary community ecology theory, with the goal of advancing progress toward increasing the predictability of restoration outcomes. Restoration ecology has commonly adopted a retrospective, deterministic, species-based model, with the goal of re-creating specific historical ecosystem states defined by particular species compositions. Contemporary models of community assembly, however, emphasize the development of divergent species assemblages due to chance dispersal events, environmental and demographic stochasticity, priority effects, and ecosystem feedbacks. In spite of such divergence in community composition, community assembly may be predictable through the use of functional traits. To date, the extension of these potentially promising concepts to restoration remains poorly explored. To what extent can restoration outcomes become more predictable through stronger alignment with contemporary community ecology theory and broader consideration of relevant processes that may underpin variation in community assembly outcomes? Or, will the stochastic nature of community assembly fundamentally challenge our capacity to predictably restore particular species assemblages? This Organized Oral Session will explore these questions through work evaluating issues such as the roles of dispersal, environmental and demographic stochasticity, plant-soil feedbacks, and alternative states during restoration. Furthermore, talks will explore the utility of functional traits in explaining and predicting restoration outcomes. In sum, this session will provide the field of restoration ecology with an important advance through alignment with contemporary community ecology theory, seek better understanding of the processes and mechanisms that shape community assembly and predictability in restoration outcomes, and illustrate rich restoration ecology-based tests of emerging community ecology theory.