Systematic review of field research reveals critical shortfalls for restoration of tropical grassy biomes
Data files
Mar 15, 2024 version files 131.98 KB
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Medeiros_et_al-JAE2024_data.xlsx
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README.md
Abstract
Scientists and policymakers are becoming aware of the pressing need to restore tropical grassy biomes (TGB), which are home to unique biodiversity and provide essential ecosystem services to hundreds of millions of people. However, TGB face increasing threats, including the forest- and tree-centric approaches that promote their degradation though we still lack a systematic assessment of where and how TGB restoration research has been done to guide policy and practice.
We synthesised knowledge on field restoration experiments by conducting a systematic literature review to map TGB restoration field studies, examine the association of restoration techniques and degradations sources, and investigate the diversity of indicators used to monitor restoration outcomes.
TGB restoration was concentrated in Brazilian and Australian savannas, with large blindspots in Asia, Africa, and northern and western South America. Studies were largely context-dependent, with an inconsistent usage of restoration techniques to different sources of degradation. Less than half of the indicators evaluated were monitored consistently through time, often using a low-dimensional approach related to ecosystem functioning. Few studies manipulated fire, herbivores, and soils, the key drivers for the re-establishment of TGB dynamics. Unfortunately, many studies lacked negative (degraded ecosystems), positive (reference ecosystems) controls, or both, impairing attempts to robustly determine restoration outcomes.
Our overview of field research on TGB restoration highlights that research needs improvement to refine our ability to assess, plan, implement, and monitor restoration. Severe issues with experimental designs and data reporting are identified as barriers to finding generality and upscale TGB restoration to meet the goals of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.
Synthesis and implications: Our synthesis calls for enhanced field experiments, transparent data reporting, and quantitative syntheses to guide large-scale TGB restoration. The overall lack of knowledge on improving resilience and measuring outcomes hampers meaningful comparisons between studies and hinders synthetic views essential for determining appropriate restoration techniques for different degradation sources and suitable monitoring indicators. To overcome the scarcity of reliable and transparent data supporting TGB restoration, we propose a simple checklist for minimum research reporting information and a more complete multilingual standardized guideline.
README: Systematic review of field research for restoration of tropical grassy biomes
https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.12jm63z5p
Tropical grassy biomes (TGB) encompass the world’s ancient savannas, grasslands and shrublands which cover nearly 40% of the tropics, hold unique biodiversity and provide essential ecosystem services. Nonetheless, these biomes have been threatened and destroyed while also being overlooked in restoration science, policy and practice. Aiming to support achieving the agenda for TGB restoration under the UN Restoration Decade and recognizing the importance of reviews and field restoration experiments. We ran a systematic literature survey and extracted data from 90 peer reviewed articles to provided a broad overview of TGB restoration field research. Therefore, this dataset contain information from different literature field restoration experiments, encompassing sources of degradation, restoration techniques and the indicators used for evaluating and monitoring restoration success.
Description of the data and file structure
This dataset is divided into different spreadsheets:
- metadata_review: explains each of the collumns found in the 'review_data' spreadsheet
- review_data: contain the main data extracted from the 90 elected papers in this literature review
- metadata_attribute_monitoring: explains each of the collumns found in the 'attribute_monitoring_data' spreadsheet
attribute_monitoring_data: contain the data related to indicators used in restoration field research and their associated monitoring
In our review we needed to standardize the degradation sources and restoration techniques self-reported in the articles in order to create workable alluvial graphs. Therefore, the next spreadsheets are derived from the raw data self-reported in the original papers and presented in the "review_data" spreadsheet.
metadata_degradation: explains each of the collumns found in the 'degradation_data' spreadsheet
degradation_data: contain data on how degradation information was standirdized to be used for the further analyses
metadata_restoration_technique: explains each of the collumns found in the 'restoration_technique_data' spreadsheet
restoration_technique_data: contain data on how restoration technique information was standirdized to be used for the further analyses
metadata_alluvial_general: explains each of the collumns found in the 'alluvial_general' spreadsheet
alluvial_general: data used to create the alluvial graph used to link degradation sources to restoration technique
metadata_alluvial_two-three_deg: explains each of the collumns found in the 'alluvial_two-three_degradation' spreadsheet
alluvial_two-three_degradation: data used to create the alluvial graph used to link degradation with two or three sources to restoration technique
Sharing/Access information
Data was derived from literature peer reviewed articles and the list with the 90 articles can be found in the supplementary material of Medeiros et al. 2024 - Systematic review of field research reveals critical shortfalls for restoration of tropical grassy biomes (Journal of Applied Ecology)
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Methods
We conducted a systematic literature review about field research restoration in Tropical Grassy Biomes (TGB) and retrieved information from the selected papers. We presented such information in two main datasets: a general dataset (data_review: geographic coordinates, biome type, sources of degradation for each restoration site, degradation and restoration time length, manipulation of TGB main drivers, and restoration techniques) and another dataset for the indicators used to measure restoration success and their monitoring frequency intervals and length. We also present datasets used to standardize degradation source and restoration techniques, which were used to make the alluvial graphs.