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Long‐term effectiveness monitoring of spatially patterned restoration methods in a riparian forest

Jared Williams,Adam M. Lambert,John C. Stella

Published 2025 in Restoration Ecology

ABSTRACT

Ecological restoration can effectively slow or reverse the negative impacts that human land degradation and climate change impose on ecosystems. Readily accessible data that detail economical restoration approaches, evaluation techniques, and associated project outcomes can inform effective restoration methodologies to help achieve this potential. We implemented a spatially patterned methodology to restore 87 ha of riparian forest habitat, selectively applying multiple restoration approaches based on localized differences in degradation severity throughout the project area. This work was conducted as part of a large, collaborative effort to control invasive Arundo donax and reestablish contiguous natural habitat throughout the Santa Clara River floodplain in southern California. We leveraged data from expeditious, transect‐oriented vegetation surveys commonly used to quantify simple metrics of native and non‐native vegetation cover to evaluate more complex metrics of strata cover, diversity, and community composition. We compared these metrics between restored and reference areas over a 5‐year project and 4 years post‐restoration to evaluate whether restoration outcomes are sustained longer term and trends in vegetation development can be inferred from shorter‐term datasets. We show that in highly degraded areas, intensive weed removal paired with a “trans‐successional” revegetation approach increased overall diversity and facilitated a community developmental trajectory approaching reference areas. However, species composition did not converge with the reference community until several years post‐restoration, reflecting the long development time for overstory species. Our findings provide guidance in combining effective, needs‐based restoration approaches with robust and economically viable monitoring methods to improve restoration project outcomes.

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