Tuomas Haapalehto

Fighting carbon loss of degraded peatlands by jump-starting ecosystem functioning with ecological restoration

Degradation of ecosystems is a great concern on the maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Ecological restoration fights degradation aiming at the recovery of ecosystem functions such as carbon (C) sequestration and ecosystem structures like plant communities responsible for the C sequestration function. We selected 38 pristine, drained and restored boreal peatland sites in Finland and asked i) what is the long-term effect of drainage on the peatland surface layer C storage, ii) can restoration recover ecosystem functioning (surface layer growth) and structure (plant community composition) and iii) is the recovery of the original structure needed for the recovery of ecosystem functions? We found that drainage had resulted in a substantial net loss of C from surface layer of drained sites. Restoration was successful in regaining natural growth rate in the peatland surface layer already within 5 years after restoration. However, the regenerated surface layer sequestered C at a mean rate of 116.3 g m(-2) yr(-1) (SE 12.7), when a comparable short-term rate was 178.2 g m(-2) yr(-1) (SE 13.3) at the pristine sites. The plant community compositions of the restored sites were considerably dissimilar to those of pristine sites still 10 years after restoration. We conclude that ecological restoration can be used to jump-start some key peatland ecosystem functions even without the recovery of original ecosystem structure (plant community composition). However, the re-establishment of other functions like C sequestration may require more profound recovery of conditions and ecosystem structure. We discuss the potential economic value of restored peatland ecosystems from the perspective of their C sequestration function.

Recovery of plant communities after ecological restoration of forestry-drained peatlands

Abstract Ecological restoration is expected to reverse the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Due to the low number of well‐replicated field studies, the extent to which restoration recovers plant communities, and the factors underlying possible shortcomings, are not well understood even in medium term. We compared the plant community composition of 38 sites comprising pristine, forestry‐drained, and 5 or 10 years ago restored peatlands in southern Finland, with special interest in understanding spatial variation within studied sites, as well as the development of the numbers and the abundances of target species. Our results indicated a recovery of community composition 5–10 years after restoration, but there was significant heterogeneity in recovery. Plant communities farthest away from ditches were very similar to their pristine reference already 10 years after restoration. In contrast, communities in the ditches were as far from the target as the drained communities. The recovery appears to be characterized by a decline in the number and abundance of species typical to degraded conditions, and increase in the abundance of characteristic peatland species. However, we found no increase above the drained state in the number of characteristic peatland species. Our results suggest that there is a risk of drawing premature conclusions on the efficiency of ecological restoration with the current practice of short‐term monitoring. Our results also illustrate fine‐scale within‐site spatial variability in the degradation and recovery of the plant communities that should be considered when evaluating the success of restoration. Overall, we find the heterogeneous outcome of restoration observed here promising. However, low recovery in the number of characteristic species demonstrates the importance of prioritizing restoration sites, and addressing the uncertainty of recovery when setting restoration targets. It appears that it is easier to eradicate unwanted species than regain characteristic species by restoration.