DOI: 10.6078/d1mq6c
title: The eco-evolutionary history of Madagascar presents unique challenges to tropical forest restoration

description: High biodiversity and endemism combined with persistently high
 deforestation rates mark Madagascar as one of the hottest of biodiversity
 hotspots. Contemporary rising interest in large-scale reforestation, both
 globally and throughout Madagascar itself, presents a promising impetus
 for forest restoration and biodiversity conservation across the island.
 However, Madagascar may face unique restoration challenges due to its
 equally unique eco-evolutionary trajectory, which must be understood to
 enable successful ecological restoration. We conducted a systematic review
 of potential barriers to restoration for terrestrial forest biomes
 (rainforests, dry forests, subhumid highland forests) in Madagascar. Our
 results indicate that aboveground biomass recovery of Malagasy forests
 appears slower than other tropical forests. We suggest four key
 synergistic factors that inhibit restoration in Madagascar: (a) Lack of
 resilience to shifting nutrient and fire regimes arising from widespread
 high-intensity shifting cultivation; (b) Predominance of nutrient-poor,
 highly weathered ferralitic soils; (c) Vulnerability of regenerating
 native trees to competition with invasive species due to their
 evolutionary isolation; and (d) Low seed dispersal into regenerating
 forests due to the unique dependence of Malagasy trees on dispersal by
 forest-dependent endangered or extinct primates. However, we note that
 rigorous experimental study of regenerating forests in Madagascar is
 currently lacking. There is great opportunity and need for such research
 to disentangle drivers and interactions inhibiting forest restoration.
 These studies would enable reforestation practitioners to effectively
 capitalize on current global momentum to implement the large-scale
 restoration necessary for the conservation of Madagascar's numerous
 endemic species.
description: This dataset includes (1) a list of all references recovered in our literature search for the accompanying paper, and (2) data extracted from a subset of these papers. (1) We compiled peer-reviewed literature on forest restoration in Madagascar primarily through a systematic literature search of all ISI Web of Science (WOS) databases on English-language publications between 1 Jan 1990-1 March 2022 using the following search string: TS = (Madagascar AND forest AND (refor* OR restor* OR regen*)) Additional relevant papers (both in English and French) were added from the citations of the aforementioned studies, through expert referral, and through an additional search of WOS core collections using search terms related to our hypotheses, but not directly incorporating regeneration. The first datasheet in the excel file, "Included Studies", lists all studies included in our review, and a variety of relevant site and study data extracted from these papers. The second datasheet, "MasterList", includes all studies returned through our search and documents our screening process. (2) For papers included in our review, we extracted available quantitative data on aboveground biomass (AGB) recovery (eight unique datasets from nine studies - in the sheet "BiomassData") and sapling growth/survival (nine studies - in the sheet "SaplingData"). All biomass recovery data originated from naturally regenerating forests. For two studies reporting biovolume rather than biomass, we converted these values to biomass by multiplying by the average value for wood density across Madagascar (0.662 g cm<sup>-3</sup>; Chave et al. 2009, Zanne et al. 2009), as wood density was not reported for either study. We attempted to obtain supplementary data from authors when it was not available online.
description: In addition to this dataset, a README text file is included
 detailing a key and including other metadata.