Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2019L00153:body:0:p57
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2019L00153
Segment Type: other
Provision Reference: 
Character Range: 174693–176942

and biomass; reproduction; normal ratios between producers, herbivores, and predators; niche differentiation; and, overall increase in ecosystem complexity.
Self-referencing - referring to circumstances where degraded remnant vegetation serves as its own reference ecosystem.
Sod transfer - moving slabs or turves of herbaceous species and their substrate from a donor habitat to a receiving habitat.
Succession (ecological) - the process where species composition and abundances alter over time and space with later 'seral' stages dependent upon the composition and abundances of a prior state. Importantly for many of Australia's most biodiverse ecosystems such as in the southwest Australian biodiversity hotspot, the climax community in terms of species composition is reflected in the immediate post-disturbance recruitment (under natural conditions this was usually after wildfire). Thus, restoration at the outset needs to reinstate as complete a species composition as is technically and practically feasible acknowledging that restoration may require 'nurse species' to amend soils or re-establish basic ecological processes (e.g. pollinators, hydrological processes etc).
Substrate - the soil, sand, rock, debris or water medium on or in which habitats develop.
Structure, of an ecosystem - the physical organization of an ecological system both within communities and at a landscape scale (e.g. density, stratification, and distribution of species populations, habitat size and complexity, forest canopy structure, pattern of habitat patches).
Threat - a factor causing degradation, damage or destruction (e.g. clearing, hydrological change, presence of invasive species, altered disturbance regimes).
Threshold (ecological) - a point at which external conditions causes a shift in an ecosystem property to a different state. Pushing that property over a threshold requires external assistance.
Translocation - moving organisms from a donor habitat to similar habitats in a different part of the landscape. Usually undertaken to secure conservation of the organisms.
Treatment - the particular interventions or actions undertaken to achieve restoration, such as substrate amendment, exotics control, habitat conditioning, reintroductions.