Collaborative Research: Incorporating secondary foundation species in coastal restoration efforts to increase ecosystem regrowth, biodiversity recovery and climate resistance

生态恢复是应对生境退化、生物多样性丧失和气候变化的重要手段。然而，生态恢复是极具挑战性的。它需要在研究人员、保护主义者和管理人员之间建立伙伴关系，共同开发、测试和完善新的科学解决方案，以提高恢复成功率、降低成本和提高效率。沿海生态系统的恢复历来采取单一物种的方法，侧重于减少环境压力，避免竞争，并排除与其他生物的相互作用。研究人员之前的工作正在挑战这一范式，并证明物种之间和物种之间的有益相互作用是生物体和生态系统抵抗高物理压力的关键，这在恢复中很常见。利用互惠互利或积极的物种相互作用有可能以很少或没有额外成本增加恢复产量。该项目将非营利性恢复从业者与科学家联合起来，在大规模恢复中测试并系统地整合互利互动，以增加栖息地的生长，抵抗环境压力，并重新建立生物多样性。这项工作将在三个宝贵的沿海生态系统中进行，这些生态系统由于人为活动而严重下降，因此是广泛保护工作的目标-牡蛎礁，盐沼和海草草甸。这项工作的结果将为恢复战略提供信息，并纳入易于理解的培训材料（例如，分步指南和讲习班），分发给感兴趣的利益攸关方。这项工作将支持和培训研究机构和其他组织的许多保护科学家，并提供实践培训和新的、易于实施的修复技术的示范案例研究。基础物种，如盐沼草、海草和牡蛎，是栖息地形成生物，为其他生物创造当地稳定的条件。次生基础物种（SFS）是在初级基础物种（PFS）之后和内部建立的生境形成生物，它们进一步改变和增强了生态系统的功能和结构。在恢复设计中纳入共同发生的初级和次级基础物种之间的促进作用，有可能增加生态系统的再生，提高居民的生物多样性和气候抵抗力。拟议研究的总体目标是与保护组织合作，测试和共同设计基于证据的方法，恢复次级基础物种，以增加初级基础物种的生长和现场生物多样性，同时增强关键的生态系统功能（例如，恢复栖息地的气候抗性）。具体而言，该项目将：(1)通过全因子实验，测试用互补或相似的低丰度和高丰度的SFS增强先前恢复的地点对PFS生长、当地生物多样性和关键生态系统功能的影响。(2)在新恢复的系统中，用互补或相似的低丰度和高丰度的SFS共同恢复PFS，以测试增加PFS生长、当地生物多样性和重要生态系统功能的相对能力。3)调查已恢复的栖息地和参考点，量化并关联森林植被丰度和互补性与森林植被丰度、当地生物多样性和生态系统功能的变化，以检验森林植被效应的普遍性。该项目由环境生物学和综合有机体系统部以及保罗·g·艾伦家族基金会共同资助。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Ecological restoration is an important tool to combat habitat degradation, biodiversity loss, and climate change. However, ecological restoration is extremely challenging. It requires building partnerships across researchers, conservationists, and managers to co-develop, test, and refine new science-informed solutions that will improve restoration success, lower costs, and increase efficiency. Restoration in coastal systems has historically taken a single-species approach that focuses on reducing environmental stress, avoiding competition, and excluding interactions with other organisms. Previous work by the investigators is challenging this paradigm and has demonstrated that beneficial interactions among and across species are key to organismal and ecosystem resistance to the high physical stress that is common in restoration. Harnessing mutually beneficial, or positive species interactions has the potential to increase restoration yields at little or no extra cost. This project unites non-profit restoration practitioners with scientists to test and systematically incorporate mutually beneficial interactions in large-scale restoration to increase habitat growth, resistance to environmental stress, and re-establish biodiversity. This work will occur in three invaluable coastal ecosystems that have severely declined due to anthropogenic activities and therefore are the target of extensive conservation efforts – oyster reefs, salt marshes, and seagrass meadows. Results of this work will inform restoration strategies and be integrated into easy to understand training materials (e.g. step-by-step guides and workshops) that will be distributed to interested stakeholders. This work will support and train a number of conservation scientists across the research institutions and other organizations, and provide hands-on training and demonstrative case-studies of new and easy to implement restoration techniques. Foundation species, such as salt marsh grass, seagrasses, and oysters, are habitat-forming organisms that create locally stable conditions for other organisms. Secondary foundation species (SFS) are habitat-forming organisms that establish after and within a primary foundation species (PFS) that further modify and enhance ecosystem functions and structure. Inclusion of facilitation between co-occurring primary and secondary foundation species in restoration designs has the potential to increase ecosystem regrowth as well as elevate biodiversity of inhabitants and climate resistance. The overarching objective of the proposed research is to work in concert with conservation organizations to test and co-design evidence-based approaches that restore secondary foundation species to increase the growth of primary foundation species and site biodiversity, while enhancing key ecosystem functions (e.g., climate resistance of restored habitats). Specifically, this project will: 1) Test how enhancing previously restored sites with either complementary or similar SFS at both low and high abundances affects PFS growth, local biodiversity, and key ecosystem functions, 2) Co-restore PFS with either complementary or similar SFS at both low and high abundances in a fully-factorial experiment to test for the relative ability to increase PFS growth, local biodiversity, and important ecosystem functions in newly restored systems, and 3) Survey previously restored habitats and reference sites to quantify and correlate SFS abundance and complementarity with changes in PFS abundance, local biodiversity and ecosystem function to test the generality of SFS effects.This project is being supported via a joint program involving the Divisions of Environmental Biology and Integrative Organismal Systems and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.