Determining the success or otherwise of restoration activities is a key requirement for land managers and ecological practitioners. Broad-scale clearance of land for agriculture and other purposes has resulted in degraded ecological communities through loss of biodiversity and function.
Restoration programs require clear goals and carefully chosen metrics to be able to demonstrate restoration success or otherwise both in the short and long term. Functional targets are increasingly the goal of managers who aim not only to conserve species, but the functional components and ecosystem services provided. Species traits provide an important link to the function of ecosystems and the potentially the ability to asses recovery of ecological function.
We assessed the recovery trajectory of a landscape scale restoration around the Coorong, Lower Lakes in South Australia. We used traits relating to resistance and resilience strategies to determine functional diversity of revegetated plots varying in age from 0 to 3 years since planting compared to remnant vegetation. We hypothesised that the older plantings would be more similar to remnant than newer plantings in community composition and functional diversity. We developed functional targets from reference sites for further assessment.
Contrary to prediction our results showed that years which were planted most recently were more similar to remnant in community composition while functional diversity showed limited patterns over time. The presence of introduced species had a large bearing on these results. Further assessments overtime are required to assess the continued restoration of these sites both functionally and floristically. Trait based metrics show promise for these assessments.