Managing trade-offs in landscape restoration and revegetation projects

Maron, Martine and Cockfield, Geoff (2008) Managing trade-offs in landscape restoration and revegetation projects. Ecological Applications, 18 (8). pp. 2041-2049. ISSN 1051-0761

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Abstract

Landscape restoration projects often have multiple and disparate conservation, resource enhancement and sometimes economic objectives, since projects that seek to meet more than one objective tend to be viewed more positively by funding agencies and the community. The degree to which there are tradeoffs among desired objectives is an important variable for decision-makers, yet this is rarely explicitly considered. In particular, the existence of ecological thresholds has important implications for decision-making at both the project level and the regional level. We develop a model of the possibilities and choices for an agency seeking to achieve two environmental objectives in a region through revegetation of a number of sites. A graphical model of the production possibilities sets for a single revegetation project is developed and different tradeoff relationships are discussed and illustrated. Then the model is used to demonstrate the possibilities for managing all such projects within a region. We show that where there are thresholds in the tradeoff relationship between two objectives, specialization (single- or dominant- objective projects) should be considered. This is illustrated using a case study in which revegetation is used to meet avian biodiversity and salinity mitigation objectives. We conclude that where there are sufficient scientific data, explicit consideration of different types of tradeoffs can assist in making decisions about the most efficient mix and type of projects to better achieve a range of objectives within a region.

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Item Type:	Article (Commonwealth Reporting Category C)
Refereed:	Yes
Item Status:	Live Archive
Additional Information:	Copyright 2008 by the Ecological Society of America. Deposited in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher.
Depositing User:	Associate Professor Geoff Cockfield
Faculty / Department / School:	Historic - Faculty of Sciences - Department of Biological and Physical Sciences
Date Deposited:	18 Sep 2009 05:19
Last Modified:	02 Jul 2013 23:14
Uncontrolled Keywords:	trade-offs; landscape restoration; vegetation restoration; revegetation; Allocasuarina; buloke; ecological thresholds; multiple objectives; production possibilities frontier; salinity
Fields of Research :	14 Economics > 1402 Applied Economics > 140205 Environment and Resource Economics 05 Environmental Sciences > 0502 Environmental Science and Management > 050205 Environmental Management 05 Environmental Sciences > 0501 Ecological Applications > 050104 Landscape Ecology
Socio-Economic Objective:	D Environment > 96 Environment > 9612 Rehabilitation of Degraded Environments > 961299 Rehabilitation of Degraded Environments not elsewhere classified
Identification Number or DOI:	doi: 10.1890/07-1328.1
URI:	http://eprints.usq.edu.au/id/eprint/4915

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