Ecological restoration of rich fens in Europe and North America: from trial and error to an evidence-based approach.
Date
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Repository Usage Stats
views
downloads
Citation Stats
Abstract
Fens represent a large array of ecosystem services, including the highest biodiversity found among wetlands, hydrological services, water purification and carbon sequestration. Land-use change and drainage has severely damaged or annihilated these services in many parts of North America and Europe; restoration plans are urgently needed at the landscape level. We review the major constraints on the restoration of rich fens and fen water bodies in agricultural areas in Europe and disturbed landscapes in North America: (i) habitat quality problems: drought, eutrophication, acidification, and toxicity, and (ii) recolonization problems: species pools, ecosystem fragmentation and connectivity, genetic variability, and invasive species; and here provide possible solutions. We discuss both positive and negative consequences of restoration measures, and their causes. The restoration of wetland ecosystem functioning and services has, for a long time, been based on a trial-and-error approach. By presenting research and practice on the restoration of rich fen ecosystems within agricultural areas, we demonstrate the importance of biogeochemical and ecological knowledge at different spatial scales for the management and restoration of biodiversity, water quality, carbon sequestration and other ecosystem services, especially in a changing climate. We define target processes that enable scientists, nature managers, water managers and policy makers to choose between different measures and to predict restoration prospects for different types of deteriorated fens and their starting conditions.
Type
Department
Description
Provenance
Citation
Permalink
Published Version (Please cite this version)
Publication Info
Lamers, Leon PM, Melanie A Vile, Ab P Grootjans, Mike C Acreman, Rudy van Diggelen, Martin G Evans, Curtis J Richardson, Line Rochefort, et al. (2015). Ecological restoration of rich fens in Europe and North America: from trial and error to an evidence-based approach. Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc, 90(1). pp. 182–203. 10.1111/brv.12102 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/15710.
This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
Collections
Scholars@Duke
Curtis J. Richardson
Curtis J. Richardson is Professor of Resource Ecology and founding Director of the Duke University Wetland Center in the Nicholas School of the Environment. Dr. Richardson earned his degrees from the State University of New York and the University of Tennessee.
His research interests in applied ecology focus on long-term ecosystem response to large-scale perturbations such as climate change, toxic materials, trace metals, flooding, or nutrient additions. He has specific interests in phosphorus nutrient dynamics in wetlands and the effects of environmental stress on plant communities and ecosystem functions and services. The objectives of his research are to utilize ecological principles to develop new approaches to environmental problem solving. The goal of his research is to provide predictive models and approaches to aid in the management of ecosystems. Recent research activities: 1) wetland restoration of plant communities and its effects on regional water quality and nutrient biogeochemical cycles, 2) the development of ecosystem metrics as indices of wetland restoration success, 3) the effects of nanomaterial on wetland and stream ecosystem processes, 4) the development of ecological thresholds along environmental gradients, 5) wetland development trends and restoration in coastal southeastern United States, 6) the development of an outdoor wetland and stream research and teaching laboratory on Duke Forest, 7) differential nutrient limitation (DNL) as a mechanism to overcome N or P limitations across trophic levels in wetland ecosystems, and 8) carbon sequestration in coastal North Carolina pocosins.Richardson oversees the main analytical lab in NSOE, which is open to students and faculty. Dr. Richardson has been listed in Who's Who in Science™ annually since 1989 and was elected President of the Society of Wetland Scientists in 1987-88. He has served on many editorial review committees for peer-reviewed scientific journals, and he is a past Chair of the Nicholas School Division of Environmental Sciences and Policy. Dr. Richardson is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society of Wetland Scientists, and the Soil Science Society of America.
Unless otherwise indicated, scholarly articles published by Duke faculty members are made available here with a CC-BY-NC (Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial) license, as enabled by the Duke Open Access Policy. If you wish to use the materials in ways not already permitted under CC-BY-NC, please consult the copyright owner. Other materials are made available here through the author’s grant of a non-exclusive license to make their work openly accessible.