How are biodiversity and carbon stock recovered during tropical forest restoration? Supporting the ecological paradigms and political context involved

Background

Ecological restoration is a tool for achieving global environmental agendas and climate mitigation. There are many studies on the restoration of ecosystem biodiversity, as well as on the restoration of ecosystem functioning. The relationship between these two ecological features is not yet clearly known beyond a positive correlation between the two. The authors conduct this meta-analysis to explore the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in the context of ecological restoration.

Conclusions and Takeaways

The authors conclude that in degraded tropical forests, there is a positive relationship between biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration. Therefore, biodiversity conservation is an effective restoration strategy for meeting the U.N. sustainability goals. Though the relationship is not continuously linear and will eventually plateau due to maximum values, these results give the first step into how restoration functions. The authors highlight that more longer term studies are needed to understand when the plateau happens and what carbon sequestration for the future will look like.