engleski

Restoration actions in marine ecosystems: a global analysis

The conservation of nature and the management of human activities are considered effective approaches to limit the degradation of marine ecosystems and the services they provide. Current practices are clearly inadequate to reverse present trajectories of change. Marine restoration is still at its infancy, due to many gaps among current implementation methods and a substantial inconsistency in the evaluation of restoration strategies. The MERCES scientific community made a review of studies on restoration published in the last 25 years at global scale, including from very shallow to deep sea habitats, to assess how, where, at which spatial and temporal scales restoration was carried out and with what outcomes. A total of 573 studies were analysed. Despite the increasing recognition that active restoration can have a critical role in the recovery of disturbed systems, results highlight the heterogeneity of targets, implementation methods, approaches and standards across habitats. With the exception of wetlands, most restoration projects cover too small areas (< 1 ha) to match the scale of human disturbance. In addition, short project duration (one - two years), frequent lack of consideration of control areas and knowledge of baselines, largely impair the potential for showing robust success stories. The response variables used for assessing restoration effects (e.g. survival rates, mortality, growth, propagule production, biomass partitioning) change among studies and in many cases are only vaguely reported. Despite some success stories are described, most studies report high costs, also in terms of labour, and idiosyncratic outcomes. Our results show the importance for the identification of protocols, appropriate monitoring approaches and case studies for developing marine restoration and the need of applying best practices at appropriate spatial and temporal scales to make restoration a sound perspective for future management of marine ecosystems.

marine restoration ; marine ecosystems ; review

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