In 1980 the State of Connecticut began a tidal marsh restoration program targeting systems degraded by tidal restrictions and impoundments. Such marshes become dominated by common reed grass ( Phragmites australis ) and cattail ( Typha angustifolia and T. latifolia ), with little ecological connection to Long Island Sound. The management and scientific hypothesis was that returning tidal action...

Mining causes the destruction of natural ecosystems through removal of soil and vegetation and burial beneath waste disposal sites. The restoration of mined land in practice can largely be considered as ecosystem reconstruction — the reestablishment of the capability of the land to capture and retain fundamental resources. In restoration planning, it is imperative that goals, objectives, and su...

Pacific madrone (Arbutus menziesii) is in decline in urban areas of the Pacific Northwest. Maintaining significant populations of this species requires development of restoration techniques for urban environments. My research consists of investigating the effects of light, irrigation and native soil on the establishment of Pacific madrone. I transplanted 104 one year madrone seedlings into an u...

Plant root exudates contain various organic and inorganic components that include glucose, citric and oxalic acid. These components affect rhizosphere microbial and microfaunal activities, but the mechanisms are not fully known. Studies concerned from degraded grassland ecosystems with low soil carbon (C) contents are rare, in spite of the global distribution of grasslands in need of restoratio...

the use of metal-accumulating plants to clean the contaminated soil with toxic metals is the most rapidly developing component of phytoremediation as an environmentally friendly technology. overcoming harsh soil conditions and accelerating the recovery of degraded soils remain a worldwide restoration challenge. this study evaluated the effect of different concentrations of pb, zn, cu and fe on ...

T. P. Young,* D. A. Petersen and J. J. Clary Department of Plant Sciences and Ecology Graduate Group, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA *Correspondence: E-mail: [email protected] Abstract Restoration ecology is a young academic field, but one with enough history to judge it against past and current expectations of the science’s potential. The practice of ecological restoration ha...

Vegetation restoration has been widely used in karst rocky desertification (KRD) areas of southwestern China, but the response of microbial community to revegetation has not been well characterized. We investigated the diversity, structure, and co-occurrence patterns of bacterial communities in soils of five vegetation types (grassland, shrubbery, secondary forest, pure plantation and mixed pla...

Restored prairies are expected to improve soil physical properties, yet little is known about the extent of change to soil properties and how rapidly these changes take place. The objective of this study was to compare effects of prairie restoration on computed tomography (CT)-measured pore parameters. Undisturbed soil cores (76 mm diam. by 76 mm long) from native prairie (NP), restored prairie...

The landscapes of Inner Mongolia are widely known for the vast Stipa krylovii steppes. However, overgrazing and other improper land uses have extensively degraded the Stipa krylovii steppe ecosystem in recent decades. Knowledge about the soil seed banks and the remaining vegetation in these damaged ecosystems is crucial for guiding the restoration efforts. Using a germination method, this study...

Post-mining restoration sites often develop novel ecosystems as soil conditions are completely new and ecosystem assemblage can be spontaneous even on afforested sites. This study presents results from long-term monitoring and evaluation of an afforested oil-shale quarry in Estonia. The study is based on chronosequence data of soil and vegetation and comparisons are made to similar forest site-...