Plant Ecology in a Changing World
  • Topics
    • Topic Overview
    • Biomes and Climates in a Changing World >
      • Adaptation, biodiversity, and environment
      • Climate constrains plant distributions
      • Biome and climate relationships
      • Deserts
      • Grassland, savanna, and shrub biomes
      • Forest biomes
      • Alpine and tundra biomes
    • Plant adaptation >
      • Plant microclimate 1
      • Plant microclimate 2
      • Leaf energy budgets
      • Water movement through the soil-plant continuum
      • Principles of photosynthesis
      • Photosynthesis responses to light and temperature
      • Environmental stresses limit resource capture and use
      • Nutrients in the environment
      • Adaptation to environmental stress
    • Resource Allocation Changes with Environment >
      • Architecture and canopy processes
      • Plant phenology and resource allocation enhance performance
      • Leaf economic spectrum
      • Life history and reproduction
      • Defense against herbivory
      • Plant competition
    • Plant Responses to a Changing World >
      • Global changes occurring today
      • Invasive species
      • Atmospheric CO2 impacts plant
      • C3/C4 photosynthesis and climate
      • Climate change and the global carbon cycle
      • Climate warming and its impacts
    • Engineering Plant Communities >
      • Remember Utah's past and envision our future
      • Restoration ecology
      • Managed ecosystems
      • Utah urban ecology
      • Urban ecological futures
  • Assignments
    • Assignment Overview
    • Discussion
    • Problem sets
    • Ecology & Global Changes
    • Plant ecology policy
    • Defense of policy
    • Exam #1
    • Exam #2
  • Campus
    • Campus Overview
    • Grasses
    • Green infrastructure >
      • GI Overview
      • Stormwater >
        • GI 1
        • GI 2
        • GI 3
        • GI 4
        • GI 10
      • Green roof
      • Pollinator >
        • Pollinator species
    • Conifers
    • Deciduous
    • Invasives
  • Biomes
    • Biome Overview
    • Climate diagrams
    • Vegetation sight-seeing trip
    • Biome images
  • Models
  • Lab
Still in preparation - check back soon
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Topic 30 - Restoration ecology - putting the system back together


Essential elements from Topic 30:
Here, we will 
  1. Describe several of the fundamental areas in which surfaces are disturbed and require restoration. Among these primary terrestrial disturbances in our region where restoration is required are strip mining, extraction mining with tailings, overgrazed grasslands, forest and desert shrub lands that have burned, and roadsides following road construction.
  2. Explore the fundamental reasons that landscapes are restored following disturbances:, including compensation for habitat loss, to deliver ecosystem services, to ensure resilience, and as a legal requirement following surface disturbances.
  3. Learn about the need to understand key aspects of ecophysiology where plant tolerance characteristics influence re-establishment following disturbance, including water stress, light stress, metal toxicity, and thermal (microclimates).
  4. Understand the importance of nutrient limits on plant establishment, including the constraints imposed by a lack of mycorrhizal species that facilitate nutrient uptake in higher plants.
  5. Understand the role that acidic soils, salinity, and/or toxic nutrients can play in limiting plant re-establishment.
  6. Explore the role of nurse plants in establishment of some species and of the ways in which longer-term plant successional processes alter vegetation and soil structure so as to allow other longer-lived species to become established.


Click here to download PDF of slides associated with Topic 30
Click here to view YOUTUBE videos on Topic 30
Jim Ehleringer, University of Utah