Opening the Floodgates: Optimising Ecosystems Targets and Co- Benefits in Wetland Restoration
Creators: name: Rummell, Ashley
Publisher: name: University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: remote sensing
subject: fish and crustaceans
subject: restoration ecology
subject: restoration management
subject: indicators
subject: mangroves
subject: saltmarsh
subject: connectivity
subject: Fisheries sciences
subject: Ecology
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: Environmental management

description: Coastal wetlands are communities of mangroves and saltmarshes that provide numerous ecosystems services and functions, including carbon storage, nutrient cycling, fisheries benefits and biodiversity. However, mangroves and saltmarshes are amongst the world’s most degraded ecosystems which have been depleted of the services and functions they provide. For this reason, wetland restoration projects are becoming more widespread with greater investment that focuses on the regeneration of focal ecosystems and their associated ecological co-benefits. Providing accurate assessments of recovery, selecting and measuring suitable indicators to detect benefits of restoration, and adopting appropriate approaches for site selection that are informed by principles from landscape ecology and spatial conservation prioritization, are essential for supporting wetland restoration projects to deliver positive outcomes for the recovery of target ecosystems and ecological co-benefits. This thesis used a restoring coastal wetland in eastern Australia as a model system to fill a sizable gap in our knowledge and understanding of remote sensing science, restoration ecology and spatial and seascape ecology, and examine how the learnings from these disciplines might be integrated to improve the effectiveness of wetland restoration projects in delivering positive outcomes for target ecosystems and ecological co-benefits. It pioneered an accurate and reliable approach (i.e. 90 to 95% overall accuracy) for monitoring the recovery of target ecosystems, identified the viability of fish and crustacean assemblages as early indicators of positive recovery trajectories in restoration, demonstrated the strong effects of connectivity and habitat context in influencing the recovery of ecological co-benefits in restoration, and illustrated the significance of functional complementarity and landscape heterogeneity for promoting ecological functions across restoring seascapes. These results highlight the need for coastal managers to use more robust methods to quantify the succession of target ecosystems, adopt fish and crustacean communities as early success indicators for biodiversity and fisheries targets co-benefits, prioritise restoration sites to enhance ecological co-benefits and widen the diversity and availability of ecological niche space to promote ecological functioning. Incorporating these approaches into the planning and management of wetland restoration projects can provide numerous performance indicators of restoration success, support informed and adaptive management decisions, and ensure restoration programs are sited, designed and monitored to maximise potential ecological co-benefits and functions from ecosystem recovery.