1 00:00:00,230 --> 00:00:01,583 - Good afternoon, everyone. 2 00:00:02,550 --> 00:00:05,620 You will recall last week when Dr. Zahawi 3 00:00:05,620 --> 00:00:07,950 made his presentation from the Galapagos Islands 4 00:00:07,950 --> 00:00:11,300 that we had internet connectivity issues, 5 00:00:11,300 --> 00:00:16,300 and he has very graciously found time in his busy schedule 6 00:00:16,360 --> 00:00:20,260 to record his research presentation 7 00:00:20,260 --> 00:00:21,963 again from the Galapagos. 8 00:00:23,290 --> 00:00:25,020 So Dr. Zahawi, welcome again, 9 00:00:25,020 --> 00:00:27,990 and we look forward to hearing about your talk 10 00:00:27,990 --> 00:00:31,940 and work in Costa Rica in your talk entitled, 11 00:00:31,940 --> 00:00:35,443 The role of restoration in preserving plant diversity. 12 00:00:38,660 --> 00:00:39,770 - Thank you, Ryan, 13 00:00:39,770 --> 00:00:43,240 and thank you all for being here today, 14 00:00:43,240 --> 00:00:44,790 or listening to this recording. 15 00:00:47,210 --> 00:00:52,210 This talk is focused on a long-term research project 16 00:00:52,830 --> 00:00:53,980 in Southern Costa Rica 17 00:00:53,980 --> 00:00:57,560 with a number of collaborators who are listed here. 18 00:00:57,560 --> 00:00:59,740 My main collaborator, Karen Holl, 19 00:00:59,740 --> 00:01:02,230 and then a number of other colleagues as well 20 00:01:02,230 --> 00:01:07,230 who've worked on and off with this project over the years. 21 00:01:08,840 --> 00:01:13,840 So, restoration has really hit the global scale. 22 00:01:14,060 --> 00:01:16,610 There are numerous initiatives 23 00:01:16,610 --> 00:01:18,890 that have sprung up over the last decade 24 00:01:18,890 --> 00:01:20,970 from all over the world. 25 00:01:20,970 --> 00:01:23,520 These are really impressive commitments, 26 00:01:23,520 --> 00:01:27,323 as you see here with some of these examples on the slide. 27 00:01:28,350 --> 00:01:33,350 But what this generates are really fundamental questions. 28 00:01:34,460 --> 00:01:37,730 One is, how do we restore at these kinds of scales? 29 00:01:37,730 --> 00:01:40,200 Most research and restoration to date 30 00:01:40,200 --> 00:01:43,720 has been on small-scale projects 31 00:01:44,650 --> 00:01:46,620 on the order of a few hectares 32 00:01:46,620 --> 00:01:48,370 or maybe a few dozen hectares, 33 00:01:48,370 --> 00:01:50,430 now we're talking about tens 34 00:01:50,430 --> 00:01:53,680 and hundreds of thousands of hectares and even more. 35 00:01:53,680 --> 00:01:56,060 So how do we move things up to that scale 36 00:01:56,060 --> 00:01:58,060 is a really critical question, 37 00:01:58,060 --> 00:02:00,030 and how do we make it feasible? 38 00:02:00,030 --> 00:02:02,760 So when you're doing small-scale restoration, 39 00:02:02,760 --> 00:02:04,690 adding a few dollars here or there 40 00:02:04,690 --> 00:02:06,110 doesn't really matter that much, 41 00:02:06,110 --> 00:02:11,000 but if you're scaling things up to millions of hectares, 42 00:02:11,000 --> 00:02:16,000 a few dollars multiplied out becomes quite cost prohibitive. 43 00:02:20,660 --> 00:02:23,030 So in the gamut of restoration, 44 00:02:23,030 --> 00:02:24,530 we have natural regeneration 45 00:02:24,530 --> 00:02:28,160 at the lower end of the economic spectrum. 46 00:02:28,160 --> 00:02:31,560 It's much more cost effective to allow a system 47 00:02:31,560 --> 00:02:35,870 basically to regenerate on its own if it can do so. 48 00:02:35,870 --> 00:02:40,140 As in the example here in Yucatan where you have 49 00:02:40,140 --> 00:02:42,330 quite a bit of recovery seen in this photograph 50 00:02:42,330 --> 00:02:46,200 just a couple of years after the plot was let go. 51 00:02:46,200 --> 00:02:49,270 But natural regeneration doesn't always happen. 52 00:02:49,270 --> 00:02:51,870 And this is another other example in Panama 53 00:02:51,870 --> 00:02:55,140 that's a 10-year-old pasture that has been abandoned, 54 00:02:55,140 --> 00:02:56,170 but he wouldn't know it, 55 00:02:56,170 --> 00:02:59,450 because it looks much like it did 56 00:02:59,450 --> 00:03:01,580 probably when it was first let go. 57 00:03:01,580 --> 00:03:05,790 So figuring out how and when to intervene 58 00:03:05,790 --> 00:03:07,960 and the degree of intervention 59 00:03:07,960 --> 00:03:10,483 is really a key piece in this. 60 00:03:11,690 --> 00:03:16,690 Tree planting obviously is one option for restoration, 61 00:03:16,890 --> 00:03:19,370 can facilitate the recovery process 62 00:03:19,370 --> 00:03:22,400 by eliminating aggressive pasture grasses 63 00:03:22,400 --> 00:03:25,210 which are generally intolerant to shade. 64 00:03:25,210 --> 00:03:28,420 It also improves the microclimatic conditions 65 00:03:28,420 --> 00:03:30,920 by providing a little bit of shade, 66 00:03:30,920 --> 00:03:33,503 improving soil conditions through litterfall, 67 00:03:34,350 --> 00:03:37,310 and also, of course, attracting seed dispersers 68 00:03:37,310 --> 00:03:41,363 that bring in seeds from other sources, presumably. 69 00:03:42,520 --> 00:03:45,750 The key crux to this is planting trees 70 00:03:45,750 --> 00:03:48,463 is much more costly than just letting a system go. 71 00:03:50,220 --> 00:03:54,253 It also requires a number of considerations. 72 00:03:58,150 --> 00:04:01,640 So you need to know, first, when planting is needed, 73 00:04:01,640 --> 00:04:05,320 which I already mentioned earlier, but also how to plant. 74 00:04:05,320 --> 00:04:08,070 So first we have to figure out 75 00:04:08,070 --> 00:04:09,990 if we really need to plant trees, 76 00:04:09,990 --> 00:04:14,190 then we need to know the process involved 77 00:04:14,190 --> 00:04:17,640 and also ensure that there's funding in place 78 00:04:17,640 --> 00:04:20,180 for long-term maintenance and monitoring. 79 00:04:20,180 --> 00:04:22,120 So you can't just stick 80 00:04:22,120 --> 00:04:24,590 a 30-centimeter tall seedling in the ground 81 00:04:24,590 --> 00:04:25,460 and call it a day. 82 00:04:25,460 --> 00:04:27,760 In the tropics it will completely be swamped 83 00:04:27,760 --> 00:04:31,110 by grasses and other species 84 00:04:31,110 --> 00:04:32,720 and will be gone within six months. 85 00:04:32,720 --> 00:04:36,700 So you have to put in place long-term funding 86 00:04:36,700 --> 00:04:41,700 to cover that initial phase of restoration 87 00:04:42,550 --> 00:04:47,550 until trees can stand for themselves, fend for themselves. 88 00:04:50,090 --> 00:04:52,320 The end goal is also a really important question. 89 00:04:52,320 --> 00:04:57,320 So in restoration, your end goal might be carbon offsets. 90 00:04:58,900 --> 00:05:01,000 You might just be trying to sequester carbon, 91 00:05:01,000 --> 00:05:06,000 in which case one set of target species might be considered. 92 00:05:06,560 --> 00:05:08,100 Or it might be biodiversity 93 00:05:08,100 --> 00:05:10,700 and in which case you might approach things differently 94 00:05:10,700 --> 00:05:12,610 or plant a different set of species. 95 00:05:12,610 --> 00:05:17,610 So understanding that from the outset is very important. 96 00:05:26,160 --> 00:05:28,630 I work in Southern Costa Rica. 97 00:05:28,630 --> 00:05:31,550 This is a wet part of the country, 98 00:05:31,550 --> 00:05:33,270 about three and a half to four meters 99 00:05:33,270 --> 00:05:35,340 of rainfall per year. 100 00:05:35,340 --> 00:05:38,220 It's a mid elevation, 1200 meters, 101 00:05:38,220 --> 00:05:40,880 and I've been working this part of Costa Rica 102 00:05:40,880 --> 00:05:43,793 for the better part of 20 years. 103 00:05:45,550 --> 00:05:49,310 This area, if you zoom into this spot right up here 104 00:05:49,310 --> 00:05:50,890 and look at it over time, 105 00:05:50,890 --> 00:05:54,230 was a very forested part of the country 106 00:05:54,230 --> 00:05:57,750 in the mid 20th century, but was quickly converted 107 00:05:57,750 --> 00:06:01,870 to an agricultural system by the early 1980s 108 00:06:01,870 --> 00:06:05,423 with about 30% or so forest cover remaining. 109 00:06:07,640 --> 00:06:12,120 This is not unlike many other parts of the tropics. 110 00:06:12,120 --> 00:06:17,120 And if you zoom in further still and look at this over time, 111 00:06:18,470 --> 00:06:20,670 what you're looking at here in the dark green 112 00:06:20,670 --> 00:06:25,670 are old growth, remnant forest that was never cleared, 113 00:06:26,630 --> 00:06:29,323 and in various different shades of orange, 114 00:06:30,200 --> 00:06:32,410 secondary forest that's coming back. 115 00:06:32,410 --> 00:06:36,190 So basically this plot here, this image, 116 00:06:36,190 --> 00:06:39,850 shows you or indicates that this system 117 00:06:39,850 --> 00:06:44,443 has the capacity to recover naturally to some extent. 118 00:06:46,400 --> 00:06:50,343 And then the gray area is all agricultural land today. 119 00:06:51,340 --> 00:06:54,620 Within this system, the area outlined in black 120 00:06:54,620 --> 00:06:57,480 is the Las Cruces Biological Station Reserve. 121 00:06:57,480 --> 00:06:58,340 This is where I worked 122 00:06:58,340 --> 00:07:01,403 for the better part of 10 years as director. 123 00:07:02,250 --> 00:07:05,750 While I was there we established a permanent plot 124 00:07:06,720 --> 00:07:10,380 to study old growth forest over time. 125 00:07:10,380 --> 00:07:12,440 And this is what that plot looks like, 126 00:07:12,440 --> 00:07:17,050 it's 150 by 150 meters where we surveyed and mapped 127 00:07:17,050 --> 00:07:21,740 all trees and lianas greater than five centimeters DBH. 128 00:07:21,740 --> 00:07:25,320 This amounted to about 3,500 individuals 129 00:07:25,320 --> 00:07:28,000 representing 200 or so species. 130 00:07:28,000 --> 00:07:33,000 And we censused this area three times thus far 131 00:07:35,850 --> 00:07:40,823 over the time span of about a little over a decade. 132 00:07:41,700 --> 00:07:43,810 And the results are, 133 00:07:43,810 --> 00:07:46,870 there are many results to this in several publications, 134 00:07:46,870 --> 00:07:50,233 but I'll focus on just one of our early publications here 135 00:07:50,233 --> 00:07:53,980 to underscore an important message. 136 00:07:53,980 --> 00:07:57,700 So this is a rank-abundance curve, 137 00:07:57,700 --> 00:08:00,710 or dominance-diversity curve if you will, 138 00:08:00,710 --> 00:08:03,890 where species are ranked from the most dominant 139 00:08:03,890 --> 00:08:06,450 to the least dominant on your X axis here. 140 00:08:06,450 --> 00:08:11,120 So number one is, appropriately, your top species, 141 00:08:11,120 --> 00:08:12,500 and then all the way out here 142 00:08:12,500 --> 00:08:16,250 180 is your least dominant or your rare species. 143 00:08:16,250 --> 00:08:18,450 And then you've got a log scale on your Y axis, 144 00:08:18,450 --> 00:08:23,450 so basically the translation is your top species here 145 00:08:24,540 --> 00:08:27,873 represents about 10% of all individuals in this forest. 146 00:08:29,060 --> 00:08:30,670 What's really stunning here 147 00:08:30,670 --> 00:08:32,930 is to look at the other end of the scale 148 00:08:32,930 --> 00:08:36,240 and look at these dots over here. 149 00:08:36,240 --> 00:08:39,840 And these species, which amount to over 50 species, 150 00:08:39,840 --> 00:08:42,060 are represented by one individual 151 00:08:42,060 --> 00:08:43,560 in two and a quarter hectares. 152 00:08:44,670 --> 00:08:47,620 Not only that, but between these two surveys, 153 00:08:47,620 --> 00:08:52,340 there was a 50% turnover rate in rare species. 154 00:08:52,340 --> 00:08:56,750 So a couple of those dropped out, a few came in, 155 00:08:56,750 --> 00:09:00,700 and so really quite a dramatic shift, 156 00:09:00,700 --> 00:09:03,170 basically saying two things. 157 00:09:03,170 --> 00:09:05,250 You've got a lot of rare species in there, 158 00:09:05,250 --> 00:09:08,930 so you still have a lot of that diversity in this system, 159 00:09:08,930 --> 00:09:13,210 and there's, looking at this whole plot in general, 160 00:09:13,210 --> 00:09:15,550 there's still a lot of resilience 161 00:09:15,550 --> 00:09:18,880 or ability within the system to bounce back, 162 00:09:18,880 --> 00:09:21,830 because we've got a lot of that species pool still present. 163 00:09:24,050 --> 00:09:26,810 So, we need to focus on facilitating recovery, 164 00:09:26,810 --> 00:09:28,583 but how do we go about doing that? 165 00:09:29,820 --> 00:09:32,410 What we've done in Southern Costa Rica 166 00:09:32,410 --> 00:09:35,095 is establish a long-term restoration project 167 00:09:35,095 --> 00:09:36,220 called the Islas Project. 168 00:09:36,220 --> 00:09:41,060 This was established around 2004 through 2006, 169 00:09:41,060 --> 00:09:43,850 where we had 13 one hectare sites. 170 00:09:43,850 --> 00:09:45,960 And at each of these three sites, 171 00:09:45,960 --> 00:09:50,740 we basically replicated three treatments, 172 00:09:50,740 --> 00:09:54,000 each 1/4 hectare in size. 173 00:09:54,000 --> 00:09:56,680 Here you're looking at these three treatments, 174 00:09:56,680 --> 00:09:59,115 they're each 50 by 50 meters. 175 00:09:59,115 --> 00:10:02,890 Natural regeneration where we didn't plant anything, 176 00:10:02,890 --> 00:10:07,030 a plantation style restoration effort 177 00:10:07,030 --> 00:10:09,690 where we planted the entire area with trees, 178 00:10:09,690 --> 00:10:12,640 and then what we call an island system 179 00:10:12,640 --> 00:10:14,230 or an applied nucleation system 180 00:10:14,230 --> 00:10:19,103 where we planted trees in patches of three different sizes. 181 00:10:20,010 --> 00:10:23,070 We also had adjacent reference forest plots for comparison. 182 00:10:23,070 --> 00:10:26,910 So this is your forest that wasn't cleared 183 00:10:26,910 --> 00:10:29,920 or was selectively logged at some point, 184 00:10:29,920 --> 00:10:33,220 but is the representation of the habitat 185 00:10:33,220 --> 00:10:35,563 I talked about in the previous slide. 186 00:10:37,720 --> 00:10:38,600 Why patches? 187 00:10:38,600 --> 00:10:42,310 Well this is an image of a tree patch that was planted, 188 00:10:42,310 --> 00:10:43,560 this is actually a different study, 189 00:10:43,560 --> 00:10:47,080 but it's a really nice photograph, 190 00:10:47,080 --> 00:10:51,467 showing this plot right here in the center of trees, 191 00:10:51,467 --> 00:10:56,443 and this winds up being a foci or a focus of regeneration, 192 00:10:57,490 --> 00:11:01,300 where recovery occurs. 193 00:11:01,300 --> 00:11:03,060 Planting in patches is, of course, 194 00:11:03,060 --> 00:11:05,130 much less labor and resource intensive, 195 00:11:05,130 --> 00:11:07,480 you're planting fewer trees, 196 00:11:07,480 --> 00:11:11,740 but it also copies the natural regeneration process. 197 00:11:11,740 --> 00:11:13,930 So if you leave a pasture like this 198 00:11:13,930 --> 00:11:15,950 to recover of its own accord, 199 00:11:15,950 --> 00:11:17,640 what usually happens is 200 00:11:17,640 --> 00:11:20,430 something like this shrub will colonize 201 00:11:20,430 --> 00:11:24,000 and that will facilitate the colonization of other species. 202 00:11:24,000 --> 00:11:26,990 And over time, you wind up getting 203 00:11:26,990 --> 00:11:31,990 this progression of trees and species coming in 204 00:11:32,940 --> 00:11:36,140 and coalescing into a recovered habitat. 205 00:11:36,140 --> 00:11:37,960 So that patchy recovery 206 00:11:37,960 --> 00:11:42,960 is just how the natural process takes place. 207 00:11:43,510 --> 00:11:47,290 And so we're trying to, in effect, mimic that process 208 00:11:47,290 --> 00:11:48,743 but give it a little boost. 209 00:11:49,900 --> 00:11:54,610 And then the last point is one of the questions 210 00:11:54,610 --> 00:11:59,206 or the topics that really interests me in restoration, 211 00:11:59,206 --> 00:12:00,940 is our legacy effect. 212 00:12:00,940 --> 00:12:03,530 So what are we doing on the ground, 213 00:12:03,530 --> 00:12:07,870 and how does that impact 214 00:12:07,870 --> 00:12:10,913 the trajectory of species over time? 215 00:12:12,580 --> 00:12:15,830 In other words, if you're planting four species of trees, 216 00:12:15,830 --> 00:12:17,570 which is what we did in our study, 217 00:12:17,570 --> 00:12:20,590 but if you're planting it across thousands of hectares, 218 00:12:20,590 --> 00:12:25,170 that's likely gonna leave a very strong footprint 219 00:12:25,170 --> 00:12:28,250 or thumbprint on the land for a long time, 220 00:12:28,250 --> 00:12:30,190 because those species are gonna regenerate 221 00:12:30,190 --> 00:12:33,810 and they're going to basically maybe preclude 222 00:12:33,810 --> 00:12:38,810 or not facilitate the recovery of other species coming in 223 00:12:38,860 --> 00:12:42,040 simply cause you've got a uniform canopy (indistinct). 224 00:12:42,040 --> 00:12:44,230 So reducing that legacy effect 225 00:12:44,230 --> 00:12:49,213 is a really key issue in restoration. 226 00:12:53,280 --> 00:12:56,500 Looking at applied nucleation in a little bit more detail. 227 00:12:56,500 --> 00:12:58,146 We have a number of questions 228 00:12:58,146 --> 00:13:00,510 that we're looking at in this project. 229 00:13:00,510 --> 00:13:03,410 Does applied nucleation enhance recovery similarly 230 00:13:03,410 --> 00:13:07,020 as does plantation or passive restoration, 231 00:13:07,020 --> 00:13:09,470 which is the same as saying natural regeneration? 232 00:13:10,670 --> 00:13:15,483 What's that ideal island size for these plots? 233 00:13:16,880 --> 00:13:19,250 What about islands expanding, 234 00:13:19,250 --> 00:13:21,863 do they really expand or do they just get stuck? 235 00:13:22,760 --> 00:13:25,250 And how does this recovery shift over the long term? 236 00:13:25,250 --> 00:13:28,160 So restoration is not an overnight process. 237 00:13:28,160 --> 00:13:31,100 Even in the tropics it takes time. 238 00:13:31,100 --> 00:13:35,240 And so we need to look at this over longer time spans 239 00:13:35,240 --> 00:13:38,401 and look at these questions of legacy 240 00:13:38,401 --> 00:13:42,883 and how these systems change after the first few years. 241 00:13:44,490 --> 00:13:49,490 We also looked at, or are looking at, the landscape level. 242 00:13:49,560 --> 00:13:51,280 And here we're looking at 243 00:13:51,280 --> 00:13:54,250 whether recovery is more strongly affected 244 00:13:54,250 --> 00:13:56,500 by within-site restoration strategy, 245 00:13:56,500 --> 00:13:59,240 i.e. what we do on the ground. 246 00:13:59,240 --> 00:14:02,000 Do we plant a bunch of trees, do we not plant, 247 00:14:02,000 --> 00:14:03,520 do we plant in patches 248 00:14:03,520 --> 00:14:08,460 versus what's the surrounding landscape doing? 249 00:14:08,460 --> 00:14:09,850 If we have a lot of forest, 250 00:14:09,850 --> 00:14:11,490 as you see in this image right here, 251 00:14:11,490 --> 00:14:13,160 versus very little forest, 252 00:14:13,160 --> 00:14:17,653 does that have a strong impact on recovery? 253 00:14:24,420 --> 00:14:26,810 There are many publications 254 00:14:26,810 --> 00:14:28,790 that have come from this project to date, 255 00:14:28,790 --> 00:14:33,790 over 50 thus far on a whole range of topics. 256 00:14:34,490 --> 00:14:37,260 I'm obviously not going to go through all of them today, 257 00:14:37,260 --> 00:14:39,150 but just to give you all a sense 258 00:14:39,150 --> 00:14:43,080 of the breadth of work and the importance 259 00:14:43,080 --> 00:14:45,050 of, I should say, collaboration, 260 00:14:45,050 --> 00:14:48,980 as many of these thematic areas 261 00:14:48,980 --> 00:14:51,233 were led by other scientists. 262 00:14:54,680 --> 00:14:57,400 In terms of site recovery, 263 00:14:57,400 --> 00:14:58,710 I wanted to give you a visual image. 264 00:14:58,710 --> 00:15:01,380 Over here is a person standing for scale. 265 00:15:01,380 --> 00:15:05,690 This is a plot at time zero with the trees planted there. 266 00:15:05,690 --> 00:15:10,510 And then this is that same plot eight years or so later, 267 00:15:10,510 --> 00:15:15,510 this wall of trees is really your plantation. 268 00:15:16,080 --> 00:15:19,520 And then the foreground here is your control 269 00:15:19,520 --> 00:15:20,910 or your natural regeneration. 270 00:15:20,910 --> 00:15:24,510 You can see that it's still stifled with grass, right? 271 00:15:24,510 --> 00:15:28,270 So there's a big difference, you know, from here to here, 272 00:15:28,270 --> 00:15:32,947 even though time zero was exactly the same, right? 273 00:15:34,950 --> 00:15:36,870 Another site with natural regeneration, 274 00:15:36,870 --> 00:15:41,700 this one not so overrun by grasses. 275 00:15:41,700 --> 00:15:43,160 An artist rendition, 276 00:15:43,160 --> 00:15:46,750 you can see a typical natural regeneration plot 277 00:15:46,750 --> 00:15:49,870 with some recruits of trees, a few big ones, 278 00:15:49,870 --> 00:15:51,970 a lot of grass still in the understory, 279 00:15:51,970 --> 00:15:53,803 but it's coming back, right? 280 00:15:55,080 --> 00:15:57,420 Plantation, open understory, 281 00:15:57,420 --> 00:16:01,410 which is not what some people expect. 282 00:16:01,410 --> 00:16:03,670 This is what it looks like in the artist's rendition. 283 00:16:03,670 --> 00:16:06,057 Again, you can see these rows of trees here, 284 00:16:06,057 --> 00:16:08,730 but you do have recruits and other species 285 00:16:08,730 --> 00:16:10,883 that are outside of those rows as well. 286 00:16:11,810 --> 00:16:13,890 And then islands, 287 00:16:13,890 --> 00:16:16,460 a hybrid, obviously, between the two systems. 288 00:16:16,460 --> 00:16:19,400 Some rows of trees, also some natural recruits, 289 00:16:19,400 --> 00:16:21,000 a little bit of grass remaining, 290 00:16:22,033 --> 00:16:24,903 and some open understory as well. 291 00:16:27,650 --> 00:16:32,650 This is what a typical site looked like a few years ago. 292 00:16:32,870 --> 00:16:36,150 This is drone imagery looking at 293 00:16:36,150 --> 00:16:38,410 basically a canopy height model here. 294 00:16:38,410 --> 00:16:41,370 Your dark green on the far left there under the plantation 295 00:16:41,370 --> 00:16:46,370 is your higher canopy, taller canopy, 20 meters or so. 296 00:16:47,910 --> 00:16:49,371 And then on the far right, 297 00:16:49,371 --> 00:16:51,347 you've got your applied nucleation, 298 00:16:51,347 --> 00:16:52,720 you've got your patches of trees 299 00:16:52,720 --> 00:16:55,820 that are really kind of coalesced on the two sides, right? 300 00:16:55,820 --> 00:16:58,640 And then you've got an open area in between here 301 00:16:58,640 --> 00:17:03,640 of area that hasn't been colonized as yet. 302 00:17:03,800 --> 00:17:07,350 But there is growth, and merging of these two islands. 303 00:17:07,350 --> 00:17:12,330 And then natural regeneration, several patches of trees, 304 00:17:12,330 --> 00:17:17,330 but again, a lot of open areas with fairly low elevation. 305 00:17:19,300 --> 00:17:23,000 Canopy cover highlighted in blue here 306 00:17:23,000 --> 00:17:26,460 comparing applied nucleation to plantation as a mean, 307 00:17:26,460 --> 00:17:27,963 and you can see, you know, 308 00:17:29,501 --> 00:17:33,610 it does lag a little bit behind the plantation, 309 00:17:33,610 --> 00:17:35,447 but it's not that far behind. 310 00:17:36,650 --> 00:17:39,880 And bit shorter in stature overall, 311 00:17:39,880 --> 00:17:41,960 because you've got these open spaces 312 00:17:41,960 --> 00:17:44,230 that you're also sensing in there. 313 00:17:44,230 --> 00:17:47,390 But certainly what you can see from here 314 00:17:47,390 --> 00:17:49,130 is that they do expand and grow, 315 00:17:49,130 --> 00:17:51,783 because the original area planted was 18%. 316 00:17:57,920 --> 00:18:00,800 Let's dig a little bit deeper into the data here. 317 00:18:00,800 --> 00:18:03,613 So look at that question of early indicators. 318 00:18:04,720 --> 00:18:07,123 In other words, do we plant or do we not plant? 319 00:18:07,970 --> 00:18:11,810 On your left-hand side here is a graph 320 00:18:11,810 --> 00:18:14,580 showing above-ground biomass accumulation. 321 00:18:14,580 --> 00:18:15,870 And the three different treatments, 322 00:18:15,870 --> 00:18:18,270 they'll be arranged in this way in all of my slides, 323 00:18:18,270 --> 00:18:19,710 so your natural regeneration, 324 00:18:19,710 --> 00:18:22,000 your island, and your plantation 325 00:18:22,000 --> 00:18:24,493 split into two categories here. 326 00:18:27,091 --> 00:18:29,360 Your natural regeneration, natural recruitment, 327 00:18:29,360 --> 00:18:31,500 so this is species that are coming in 328 00:18:31,500 --> 00:18:35,970 and germinating and establishing naturally in black, 329 00:18:35,970 --> 00:18:39,330 and then your clear bars are your planted trees. 330 00:18:39,330 --> 00:18:44,330 And so, not surprisingly, plantation wins at seven years 331 00:18:44,980 --> 00:18:47,840 in terms of above-ground biomass, 332 00:18:47,840 --> 00:18:49,330 islands are intermediate, 333 00:18:49,330 --> 00:18:51,880 and control or natural generation 334 00:18:51,880 --> 00:18:53,230 is a little further behind. 335 00:18:55,440 --> 00:18:59,840 What is perhaps more surprising, however, 336 00:18:59,840 --> 00:19:01,300 are these error bars. 337 00:19:01,300 --> 00:19:05,250 So these big error bars basically indicate 338 00:19:05,250 --> 00:19:07,093 that there's a huge disparity, 339 00:19:08,440 --> 00:19:10,540 not only across the treatments, 340 00:19:10,540 --> 00:19:12,180 but also within the treatment. 341 00:19:12,180 --> 00:19:14,920 So in other words, when you go from one site to the next, 342 00:19:14,920 --> 00:19:17,720 the plantation in some cases has done really well 343 00:19:17,720 --> 00:19:19,680 and in other cases not so well. 344 00:19:19,680 --> 00:19:22,420 And what that means, here are the numbers, 345 00:19:22,420 --> 00:19:24,770 it's an order of magnitude difference 346 00:19:26,630 --> 00:19:29,710 in terms of accumulation. 347 00:19:29,710 --> 00:19:32,370 What that means is that some sites 348 00:19:32,370 --> 00:19:36,830 really facilitate recovery, 349 00:19:36,830 --> 00:19:39,680 the species grow very quickly and so on, 350 00:19:39,680 --> 00:19:42,150 and other sites not so much. 351 00:19:42,150 --> 00:19:43,610 We took this information 352 00:19:43,610 --> 00:19:47,010 and plotted it out on this figure here. 353 00:19:47,010 --> 00:19:49,890 And if you're looking at this on your X axis, 354 00:19:49,890 --> 00:19:54,780 you've got height of your seedlings in year two 355 00:19:56,160 --> 00:20:00,403 and above-ground biomass in year eight. 356 00:20:02,360 --> 00:20:07,360 And if you plot this on this graph like this, 357 00:20:07,760 --> 00:20:09,840 what you get is seedlings 358 00:20:09,840 --> 00:20:12,150 that grew very little in the first couple of years, 359 00:20:12,150 --> 00:20:15,930 wound up contributing very little to above-ground biomass. 360 00:20:15,930 --> 00:20:19,290 Whereas seedling that were rocking, essentially, 361 00:20:19,290 --> 00:20:20,580 in the first couple of years 362 00:20:20,580 --> 00:20:24,630 and had a height of two and a half meters after two years, 363 00:20:24,630 --> 00:20:27,570 with a few exceptions, really generated 364 00:20:27,570 --> 00:20:30,390 a lot of above-ground biomass by year eight. 365 00:20:30,390 --> 00:20:35,390 So what that means is you can test sites for productivity 366 00:20:37,560 --> 00:20:40,550 or their ability to grow early on. 367 00:20:40,550 --> 00:20:43,270 Whatever is going on in those first few years 368 00:20:43,270 --> 00:20:45,500 is gonna be replicated 10 years later. 369 00:20:45,500 --> 00:20:50,500 So you could do little test plantings in broad landscapes 370 00:20:50,680 --> 00:20:54,350 to evaluate what your potential return is going to be, 371 00:20:54,350 --> 00:20:58,060 and then before you do a large investment 372 00:20:58,060 --> 00:21:01,300 of aggressive intervention only to find 373 00:21:01,300 --> 00:21:03,000 that it's not gonna be successful. 374 00:21:05,216 --> 00:21:07,000 Another way of looking at this 375 00:21:07,000 --> 00:21:09,810 is to look at the natural regeneration plots 376 00:21:09,810 --> 00:21:11,510 across that same time span. 377 00:21:11,510 --> 00:21:14,120 So here we're looking at one and a half years 378 00:21:14,120 --> 00:21:16,980 after sites were let go. 379 00:21:16,980 --> 00:21:21,980 And we had some sites with still very high grass cover 380 00:21:22,090 --> 00:21:23,710 and very few seedlings 381 00:21:23,710 --> 00:21:26,160 versus other natural regeneration plots 382 00:21:26,160 --> 00:21:31,040 with lesser amounts of grass cover and many more seedlings. 383 00:21:31,040 --> 00:21:34,900 And as you would predict having seen the previous figure, 384 00:21:34,900 --> 00:21:37,760 what happens here is a similar condition. 385 00:21:37,760 --> 00:21:40,560 The ones with few seedlings wind up with few trees, 386 00:21:40,560 --> 00:21:42,857 the ones with a lot of seedlings have a lot of trees 387 00:21:42,857 --> 00:21:45,450 and a lot more rapid recovery. 388 00:21:45,450 --> 00:21:48,080 So even without planting in the ground, 389 00:21:48,080 --> 00:21:49,470 you can look at a site and say, 390 00:21:49,470 --> 00:21:52,090 okay, I'm just gonna let this go for a couple of years 391 00:21:52,090 --> 00:21:53,150 and see what happens. 392 00:21:53,150 --> 00:21:55,860 And if it starts bouncing back quickly, 393 00:21:55,860 --> 00:21:57,410 you probably don't need to do anything, 394 00:21:57,410 --> 00:22:00,150 or maybe you need to just do some targeted planting. 395 00:22:00,150 --> 00:22:01,430 But if you don't have movement, 396 00:22:01,430 --> 00:22:02,880 as in that image I showed you 397 00:22:02,880 --> 00:22:05,080 earlier on in the talk in Panama, 398 00:22:05,080 --> 00:22:09,173 then probably some more active intervention is necessary. 399 00:22:13,080 --> 00:22:14,380 What do we stick in the ground 400 00:22:14,380 --> 00:22:17,180 is another really key question. 401 00:22:17,180 --> 00:22:20,090 And to address that, at least partially, 402 00:22:20,090 --> 00:22:22,710 I'm gonna look at this figure here. 403 00:22:22,710 --> 00:22:24,270 This is your litterfall, 404 00:22:24,270 --> 00:22:26,793 so this is your productivity of your, 405 00:22:27,950 --> 00:22:29,060 it's an indirect measure 406 00:22:29,060 --> 00:22:32,830 of productivity of growth in these systems. 407 00:22:32,830 --> 00:22:36,080 And you can see here that at five years in the survey, 408 00:22:36,080 --> 00:22:40,620 you've got plantation way ahead, islands intermediate, 409 00:22:40,620 --> 00:22:42,800 natural regeneration far behind. 410 00:22:42,800 --> 00:22:44,630 The color code here, again, 411 00:22:44,630 --> 00:22:46,290 similar to that previous figure 412 00:22:46,290 --> 00:22:48,240 but with a little bit more detail. 413 00:22:48,240 --> 00:22:49,810 Yellow are other dicots, 414 00:22:49,810 --> 00:22:52,450 so this is all naturally recruiting species, 415 00:22:52,450 --> 00:22:55,080 and then these other colors 416 00:22:55,080 --> 00:22:57,240 represent the four planted species, 417 00:22:57,240 --> 00:22:58,490 the blues and the greens. 418 00:22:59,440 --> 00:23:00,740 And what you see here 419 00:23:00,740 --> 00:23:04,780 is your plantation in those early years 420 00:23:04,780 --> 00:23:09,780 is completely dominated by the planted species we have. 421 00:23:11,506 --> 00:23:13,410 Jump forward another five or six years 422 00:23:13,410 --> 00:23:14,570 and look what happens. 423 00:23:14,570 --> 00:23:18,420 Your second survey, your islands have caught up 424 00:23:18,420 --> 00:23:22,070 in terms of productivity as to the plantation, 425 00:23:22,070 --> 00:23:23,793 no significant difference, right? 426 00:23:24,700 --> 00:23:28,750 But the makeup of that productivity is very different. 427 00:23:28,750 --> 00:23:32,760 So half of the litterfall here is made up of other dicots. 428 00:23:32,760 --> 00:23:35,730 In other words, a lot more diversity of species 429 00:23:35,730 --> 00:23:38,910 contributing to the productivity in that system 430 00:23:38,910 --> 00:23:42,590 compared to the plantation. 431 00:23:42,590 --> 00:23:44,840 So think back to that legacy question again 432 00:23:45,750 --> 00:23:47,700 that I mentioned at the very beginning. 433 00:23:48,820 --> 00:23:51,500 And then natural regeneration far behind, 434 00:23:51,500 --> 00:23:54,513 although it's steadily progressing, right? 435 00:23:55,940 --> 00:23:56,780 So what does that mean? 436 00:23:56,780 --> 00:23:59,640 Well, one way of looking at this is, 437 00:23:59,640 --> 00:24:01,520 do we want to sequester carbon? 438 00:24:01,520 --> 00:24:02,640 If that's the case, 439 00:24:02,640 --> 00:24:05,873 probably going to plantations makes the most sense. 440 00:24:07,080 --> 00:24:10,090 but if you're looking at composition or biodiversity, 441 00:24:10,090 --> 00:24:13,070 maybe islands or even, if you have even more time, 442 00:24:13,070 --> 00:24:15,280 natural regeneration makes more sense, right? 443 00:24:15,280 --> 00:24:17,200 So these are some of the ways 444 00:24:17,200 --> 00:24:19,100 you try and address these questions, 445 00:24:19,100 --> 00:24:21,250 hopefully at a smaller scale 446 00:24:21,250 --> 00:24:24,853 before doing things in huge areas. 447 00:24:26,380 --> 00:24:28,630 Let's look at the critters, 448 00:24:28,630 --> 00:24:31,963 and specifically focus on birds here for a little bit. 449 00:24:32,920 --> 00:24:35,560 Not surprisingly, birds like infrastructure, 450 00:24:35,560 --> 00:24:37,300 and here you're looking at 451 00:24:37,300 --> 00:24:40,460 frugivorous bird abundance on your Y axis, 452 00:24:40,460 --> 00:24:42,870 and they like the planted treatments more 453 00:24:42,870 --> 00:24:44,430 than they do control. 454 00:24:47,719 --> 00:24:51,040 They also had a very, whoops, 455 00:24:51,040 --> 00:24:55,910 they had a very unexpected landscape effect. 456 00:24:55,910 --> 00:24:59,420 So here on your X axis for, again, 457 00:24:59,420 --> 00:25:04,340 frugivore detections or nectarivores on the C panel. 458 00:25:04,340 --> 00:25:08,343 You've got tree cover on your X axis here from zero to 100, 459 00:25:09,260 --> 00:25:11,227 surrounding tree cover that is, 460 00:25:11,227 --> 00:25:13,900 and number of individuals. 461 00:25:13,900 --> 00:25:16,980 And what you see here is the more forest cover you have 462 00:25:16,980 --> 00:25:18,210 in the surrounding landscape, 463 00:25:18,210 --> 00:25:19,860 the fewer birds you find. 464 00:25:19,860 --> 00:25:21,560 Which is not what you would expect, 465 00:25:21,560 --> 00:25:24,630 you'd think intuitively that the more forest, 466 00:25:24,630 --> 00:25:25,833 the happier the birds, 467 00:25:27,000 --> 00:25:30,500 and this required a bit of head scratching for a while 468 00:25:30,500 --> 00:25:35,080 until I came up with this fantastic hypothesis 469 00:25:35,080 --> 00:25:37,810 of the only bar in town hypothesis. 470 00:25:37,810 --> 00:25:40,330 So basically if the only place 471 00:25:40,330 --> 00:25:43,580 to hang out in town is this bar here 472 00:25:43,580 --> 00:25:45,420 and you really need to have a beer, 473 00:25:45,420 --> 00:25:47,300 this is where you're gonna go. 474 00:25:47,300 --> 00:25:50,500 If there are a lot of other places with some better habitat, 475 00:25:50,500 --> 00:25:52,820 then you probably will go there 476 00:25:52,820 --> 00:25:57,540 over an early young restoration treatment. 477 00:25:57,540 --> 00:26:00,100 That's not to say the pattern won't change with time, 478 00:26:00,100 --> 00:26:03,540 but certainly at this point in the study, 479 00:26:03,540 --> 00:26:07,177 this was the pattern that (indistinct). 480 00:26:08,410 --> 00:26:11,770 So, let's see what these birds are doing. 481 00:26:11,770 --> 00:26:15,000 Similar to the pattern I showed you in those graphs, 482 00:26:15,000 --> 00:26:17,350 when you're looking at animal-dispersed tree seeds, 483 00:26:17,350 --> 00:26:21,370 which make up the vast majority of trees in the system, 484 00:26:21,370 --> 00:26:22,740 this is the pattern you get. 485 00:26:22,740 --> 00:26:27,100 Plantation has the highest signal, islands are intermediate, 486 00:26:27,100 --> 00:26:29,910 not statistically significant from plantation, 487 00:26:29,910 --> 00:26:32,570 and then the controls or natural regeneration 488 00:26:32,570 --> 00:26:35,110 lags pretty far behind here. 489 00:26:35,110 --> 00:26:38,330 We have no effective surrounding forest cover 490 00:26:38,330 --> 00:26:39,990 on incoming seeds. 491 00:26:39,990 --> 00:26:42,480 So basically whether you have a lot of forest 492 00:26:42,480 --> 00:26:44,160 or a little forest made no difference 493 00:26:44,160 --> 00:26:47,213 in the number of seeds per meter squared for you. 494 00:26:50,210 --> 00:26:53,250 Jump forward a bit more, now we're in 2012, 2013, 495 00:26:53,250 --> 00:26:55,300 looking at seed rain again, 496 00:26:55,300 --> 00:26:57,750 here split into smaller-seeded species 497 00:26:57,750 --> 00:26:59,323 and larger-seeded species. 498 00:27:00,200 --> 00:27:02,700 Smaller-seeded species are early successional species. 499 00:27:02,700 --> 00:27:06,170 These are species that are much more common 500 00:27:06,170 --> 00:27:08,240 in the landscape typically speaking 501 00:27:08,240 --> 00:27:12,940 and are, as you can see from this figure, 502 00:27:12,940 --> 00:27:16,910 not different across, in this case, four treatments. 503 00:27:16,910 --> 00:27:20,620 So natural regen, island, plantations, 504 00:27:20,620 --> 00:27:22,780 and R is for reference forest. 505 00:27:22,780 --> 00:27:24,160 Large-seeded species, 506 00:27:24,160 --> 00:27:26,280 which are your late successional species, 507 00:27:26,280 --> 00:27:29,730 which are your hardwoods, slower-growing species, 508 00:27:29,730 --> 00:27:32,310 there is a really distinct pattern here 509 00:27:32,310 --> 00:27:35,260 where you see the reference forest 510 00:27:35,260 --> 00:27:38,270 statistically higher number of seeds 511 00:27:38,270 --> 00:27:40,160 per meter square per year, 512 00:27:40,160 --> 00:27:42,190 then come your two planted treatments, 513 00:27:42,190 --> 00:27:45,820 and then lagging far behind is your natural regeneration. 514 00:27:45,820 --> 00:27:47,360 Again, this is a log scale, 515 00:27:47,360 --> 00:27:51,050 so these are big differences 516 00:27:51,050 --> 00:27:53,050 in terms of the number of seeds, 517 00:27:53,050 --> 00:27:55,223 basically an order of magnitude difference. 518 00:27:58,300 --> 00:28:00,750 We also looked at seedling recruits. 519 00:28:00,750 --> 00:28:03,020 So that's what we see in these two panels down here, 520 00:28:03,020 --> 00:28:06,270 and we have exactly the same pattern 521 00:28:06,270 --> 00:28:08,730 if you split your recruits 522 00:28:08,730 --> 00:28:12,330 between small-seeded recruits and large-seeded recruits. 523 00:28:12,330 --> 00:28:13,163 So in other words, 524 00:28:13,163 --> 00:28:16,320 what's going on in terms of germination and establishment, 525 00:28:16,320 --> 00:28:17,780 we still have the same pattern 526 00:28:17,780 --> 00:28:19,990 for your early-successional species, 527 00:28:19,990 --> 00:28:21,160 but a very different pattern 528 00:28:21,160 --> 00:28:23,805 for these later-successional species. 529 00:28:23,805 --> 00:28:26,300 So that's interesting because 530 00:28:26,300 --> 00:28:28,680 there isn't another filter overall 531 00:28:28,680 --> 00:28:31,800 in terms of what's coming in in seedlings. 532 00:28:31,800 --> 00:28:35,360 Once again, no effective surrounding forest cover found. 533 00:28:35,360 --> 00:28:38,650 And this pattern repeated itself 534 00:28:38,650 --> 00:28:41,560 in many, many different analyses we did. 535 00:28:41,560 --> 00:28:44,930 And this generated a bit of noise, 536 00:28:44,930 --> 00:28:48,040 because obviously a lot of studies show 537 00:28:48,040 --> 00:28:51,220 that surrounding forest cover is an important metric 538 00:28:51,220 --> 00:28:53,210 to consider in restoration. 539 00:28:53,210 --> 00:28:55,933 So I'll get back to that in just a second. 540 00:28:57,150 --> 00:29:02,150 Last slide here relating to seedlings and recruitment 541 00:29:02,280 --> 00:29:04,380 is what are the species looking like? 542 00:29:04,380 --> 00:29:06,350 What's in your composition? 543 00:29:06,350 --> 00:29:09,720 And what you're looking at here on this left figure, 544 00:29:09,720 --> 00:29:12,727 orange is your control or your natural regeneration 545 00:29:12,727 --> 00:29:14,170 and your number of samples, 546 00:29:14,170 --> 00:29:18,120 and it basically reaches an asymptote here. 547 00:29:18,120 --> 00:29:20,870 Your two planted treatments are very similar 548 00:29:20,870 --> 00:29:22,550 in the number of species, 549 00:29:22,550 --> 00:29:24,370 start to level off, but not quite. 550 00:29:24,370 --> 00:29:27,740 And then your reference forest is obviously flying out 551 00:29:27,740 --> 00:29:31,263 and would be way up here, presumably, in this projection. 552 00:29:32,660 --> 00:29:35,270 We sampled fewer sites in the reference forest. 553 00:29:35,270 --> 00:29:36,893 Likewise, that rank-abundance curve 554 00:29:36,893 --> 00:29:38,972 that you're looking at here. 555 00:29:38,972 --> 00:29:42,680 Your natural regeneration's a much steeper curve 556 00:29:42,680 --> 00:29:45,620 and peters out at around 40 species. 557 00:29:45,620 --> 00:29:48,930 Your two planted treatments have a much longer curve 558 00:29:48,930 --> 00:29:50,600 with a lot of rare species there, 559 00:29:50,600 --> 00:29:53,130 which is really important to capture. 560 00:29:53,130 --> 00:29:54,820 And then of course your reference forest 561 00:29:54,820 --> 00:29:58,570 with only, whatever it is, half the number of samples, 562 00:29:58,570 --> 00:30:02,073 still outcompeting in terms of overall number of species. 563 00:30:09,080 --> 00:30:11,550 So, what about that forest cover? 564 00:30:11,550 --> 00:30:15,490 Well, could it be that local factors are more important, 565 00:30:15,490 --> 00:30:18,400 so what we do on the ground overrides everything else, 566 00:30:18,400 --> 00:30:23,010 even if we have forest cover surrounding these plots or not? 567 00:30:23,010 --> 00:30:26,680 Or could it be an alternate hypothesis 568 00:30:26,680 --> 00:30:29,690 whereby the categorization of forest cover 569 00:30:29,690 --> 00:30:31,500 into basically just a presence 570 00:30:31,500 --> 00:30:35,233 or absence format is problematic? 571 00:30:36,170 --> 00:30:38,050 And that is, the way we did this is 572 00:30:38,050 --> 00:30:40,500 we just kind of band around these plots where we said, 573 00:30:40,500 --> 00:30:44,644 okay, you've got 30% forest cover, 60%, 80%, 574 00:30:44,644 --> 00:30:48,720 and we ran that as a covariant with our models 575 00:30:48,720 --> 00:30:52,733 and determined whether forest cover was an important factor. 576 00:30:54,240 --> 00:30:58,630 I felt that that was probably too simplistic. 577 00:30:58,630 --> 00:31:00,010 And so instead of that, 578 00:31:00,010 --> 00:31:03,860 what we really needed to do is go out into this forest 579 00:31:03,860 --> 00:31:07,120 and figure out are these trees, 580 00:31:07,120 --> 00:31:08,790 identify them to species level 581 00:31:08,790 --> 00:31:11,800 and then see what's in here in the plot. 582 00:31:11,800 --> 00:31:15,020 And so look at spacial distribution, look at abundance, 583 00:31:15,020 --> 00:31:18,740 and also look at life history traits of these mother trees 584 00:31:18,740 --> 00:31:21,093 on recruitment in our restoration forest. 585 00:31:22,370 --> 00:31:24,623 To do that we picked eight sites, 586 00:31:26,150 --> 00:31:28,510 shown here, of our 13. 587 00:31:28,510 --> 00:31:30,840 At each one, we just focused on the plantation 588 00:31:30,840 --> 00:31:33,700 shown here in red in this grid. 589 00:31:33,700 --> 00:31:37,320 And we mapped out all the trees in the surrounding landscape 590 00:31:38,470 --> 00:31:40,920 and identified them to species level. 591 00:31:40,920 --> 00:31:43,620 This wound up being about 77 tree species 592 00:31:43,620 --> 00:31:45,143 that we included in the study. 593 00:31:46,170 --> 00:31:51,170 And we then did a comprehensive survey 594 00:31:51,410 --> 00:31:55,480 of all recruits in these plots here in each plantation plot 595 00:31:56,770 --> 00:32:00,070 and came up with about 1500 mother trees, 596 00:32:00,070 --> 00:32:04,600 9,000 recruits overall in this step. 597 00:32:04,600 --> 00:32:05,530 And what did we find? 598 00:32:05,530 --> 00:32:09,720 Well, the first stop is just the simple presence 599 00:32:09,720 --> 00:32:11,683 of a mother tree, right here, 600 00:32:12,750 --> 00:32:16,600 within 100 meters of a plot, a plantation plot, 601 00:32:16,600 --> 00:32:19,210 increased tenfold the probability 602 00:32:19,210 --> 00:32:23,310 or the abundance on average of recruits upon specifics. 603 00:32:23,310 --> 00:32:24,323 So in other words, 604 00:32:25,460 --> 00:32:28,180 having a mother tree within your system 605 00:32:28,180 --> 00:32:30,040 is a really important factor. 606 00:32:30,040 --> 00:32:32,100 That's not that surprising, 607 00:32:32,100 --> 00:32:37,100 but it's nice to see that result 608 00:32:37,170 --> 00:32:38,730 when you're incorporating 609 00:32:38,730 --> 00:32:40,673 more than 70 species into your model. 610 00:32:41,910 --> 00:32:45,530 What we also found is that abundance of those mother trees 611 00:32:45,530 --> 00:32:46,500 was also important. 612 00:32:46,500 --> 00:32:48,450 So here on your X axis 613 00:32:48,450 --> 00:32:50,710 you've got increasing number of mother trees 614 00:32:50,710 --> 00:32:55,710 and on your Y axis, number of hypothetical recruits. 615 00:32:55,720 --> 00:32:58,890 And we've broken this out into three bands, 616 00:32:58,890 --> 00:33:01,170 so a 25-meter band, 617 00:33:01,170 --> 00:33:06,170 so your band closest to your plot, your target plot, 618 00:33:06,880 --> 00:33:09,680 and then a 50-meter band and a 75-meter band. 619 00:33:09,680 --> 00:33:12,450 And what you can see is if the mother trees 620 00:33:12,450 --> 00:33:17,450 have a lot of individuals within 25 meters 621 00:33:18,510 --> 00:33:21,820 and those numbers start going up, this takes off, right? 622 00:33:21,820 --> 00:33:25,897 So if we were to have 75 mother trees within our plots, 623 00:33:27,950 --> 00:33:29,420 which is highly unlikely, 624 00:33:29,420 --> 00:33:32,350 but then you'd wind up with 1000 recruits 625 00:33:32,350 --> 00:33:35,640 in your system, right? 626 00:33:35,640 --> 00:33:38,978 So that's how this model is, 627 00:33:38,978 --> 00:33:40,303 what it's projecting. 628 00:33:42,180 --> 00:33:44,410 The third piece of this study 629 00:33:44,410 --> 00:33:47,300 is that proximity of mother trees to the plot is important. 630 00:33:47,300 --> 00:33:49,550 So that 25-meter band is important, 631 00:33:49,550 --> 00:33:53,090 but so is being really, really close to the plot. 632 00:33:53,090 --> 00:33:55,740 So here we're looking at your closest distance, 633 00:33:55,740 --> 00:33:58,730 so here's mean distance of a mother tree to a plot. 634 00:33:58,730 --> 00:34:00,450 If it's super duper close 635 00:34:01,370 --> 00:34:03,040 you have have that many more seedlings 636 00:34:03,040 --> 00:34:04,940 than when it's 100 meters away. 637 00:34:04,940 --> 00:34:09,110 And this signal was much stronger for larger-seeded species, 638 00:34:09,110 --> 00:34:10,860 shown here with a solid bar, 639 00:34:10,860 --> 00:34:12,543 than for smaller-seeded species. 640 00:34:14,968 --> 00:34:17,320 And this is one example where the mother tree 641 00:34:17,320 --> 00:34:19,370 was maybe five meters away from this plot, 642 00:34:19,370 --> 00:34:22,050 it was the only mother tree of the species, 643 00:34:22,050 --> 00:34:24,970 and you can see the overwhelming signal it has 644 00:34:24,970 --> 00:34:27,233 in terms of recruits in that system. 645 00:34:29,110 --> 00:34:33,110 So, contrary to many of our previous studies, 646 00:34:33,110 --> 00:34:36,950 if you look at this appropriately at the right resolution, 647 00:34:36,950 --> 00:34:40,823 forest cover and its proximity to plots is really important, 648 00:34:42,400 --> 00:34:47,270 but you have to look at it at the appropriate level. 649 00:34:47,270 --> 00:34:49,530 And then what's also really important 650 00:34:49,530 --> 00:34:52,190 is the composition of that forest around there. 651 00:34:52,190 --> 00:34:54,840 So if you have good diversity 652 00:34:54,840 --> 00:34:56,880 and so on surrounding your plots, 653 00:34:56,880 --> 00:34:58,600 then you're in pretty good shape, 654 00:34:58,600 --> 00:34:59,433 'cause a lot of that 655 00:34:59,433 --> 00:35:02,423 is probably gonna come into your restoration sites. 656 00:35:03,800 --> 00:35:05,280 And that could be something you assess 657 00:35:05,280 --> 00:35:07,810 prior to doing large-scale restoration, 658 00:35:07,810 --> 00:35:10,403 just to know what's what's out there. 659 00:35:11,420 --> 00:35:15,902 So I'm gonna close with three take-home messages here. 660 00:35:15,902 --> 00:35:17,493 One is this question of how to. 661 00:35:18,550 --> 00:35:22,092 And I've talked a lot about that 662 00:35:22,092 --> 00:35:26,320 in this presentation already, 663 00:35:26,320 --> 00:35:28,720 but one key question that hasn't been addressed 664 00:35:28,720 --> 00:35:30,310 is this one right here. 665 00:35:30,310 --> 00:35:35,310 Do we plant these, whatever this is, nine plots, like this, 666 00:35:35,370 --> 00:35:37,730 or do we plant it like this? 667 00:35:37,730 --> 00:35:40,090 And obviously that has major implications 668 00:35:40,090 --> 00:35:43,938 for the area that you can cover in restoration 669 00:35:43,938 --> 00:35:47,040 if you get the same result doing this 670 00:35:47,040 --> 00:35:51,530 versus just having everybody clustered together, 671 00:35:51,530 --> 00:35:53,540 but that needs to be properly assessed 672 00:35:53,540 --> 00:35:55,003 to make that determination. 673 00:35:56,550 --> 00:35:58,730 The second point is what do we plant? 674 00:35:58,730 --> 00:36:00,950 And again, I alluded to this a little bit, 675 00:36:00,950 --> 00:36:03,080 but I didn't go into it in much detail. 676 00:36:03,080 --> 00:36:06,800 But a very clear example in this same study 677 00:36:06,800 --> 00:36:10,520 is that of the four species we planted in this study, 678 00:36:10,520 --> 00:36:12,760 two were wind dispersed, shown here. 679 00:36:12,760 --> 00:36:17,760 One had explosive dispersal and the fourth has a red seed, 680 00:36:18,770 --> 00:36:21,680 but it's not really consumed by birds 681 00:36:21,680 --> 00:36:25,733 because it's poisonous to some and it doesn't have a reward. 682 00:36:26,750 --> 00:36:28,680 So essentially none of our trees 683 00:36:28,680 --> 00:36:31,600 were really animal dispersed per se, 684 00:36:31,600 --> 00:36:36,600 and so you're losing that potential connection to network. 685 00:36:39,574 --> 00:36:42,970 Your plant-animal interactions are reduced to, 686 00:36:42,970 --> 00:36:45,450 well, this is a scaffolding, basically, 687 00:36:45,450 --> 00:36:47,237 in the landscape, right? 688 00:36:48,130 --> 00:36:50,220 So it might be much more important 689 00:36:50,220 --> 00:36:51,780 to plant something like this this, 690 00:36:51,780 --> 00:36:55,100 Ficus or figs are really important 691 00:36:55,100 --> 00:36:57,910 keystone species in tropical systems, 692 00:36:57,910 --> 00:37:02,170 consumed by dozens of different species of birds, 693 00:37:02,170 --> 00:37:07,170 by bats, by mammals, all kinds of species. 694 00:37:08,090 --> 00:37:09,870 And so planting them and having them 695 00:37:09,870 --> 00:37:13,070 fruit at some point in this process 696 00:37:13,070 --> 00:37:16,480 would really bring in a lot of other species 697 00:37:16,480 --> 00:37:18,620 and attract your dispersers even more. 698 00:37:19,740 --> 00:37:24,140 And then the third point is this question of persistence. 699 00:37:24,140 --> 00:37:26,400 And I'll go back to those pledges 700 00:37:26,400 --> 00:37:28,450 that I talked about at the very beginning, 701 00:37:28,450 --> 00:37:31,370 where you have all these massive global efforts 702 00:37:31,370 --> 00:37:34,880 to bring millions and millions of hectares of degraded land 703 00:37:34,880 --> 00:37:39,353 into restoration with these fantastic targets in place. 704 00:37:44,320 --> 00:37:48,650 But what we've discovered is a rather unsettling issue here, 705 00:37:48,650 --> 00:37:53,140 and we go back to the same plot that I showed you earlier. 706 00:37:53,140 --> 00:37:56,810 This study that I'm gonna talk about now 707 00:37:56,810 --> 00:37:59,007 basically looked at this area here 708 00:37:59,007 --> 00:38:01,810 and all these tiny little patches of forest 709 00:38:01,810 --> 00:38:03,080 all throughout this landscape, 710 00:38:03,080 --> 00:38:06,573 1700 secondary forest patches in all, 711 00:38:07,720 --> 00:38:10,260 and looked at their longevity 712 00:38:10,260 --> 00:38:12,610 or their persistence over time. 713 00:38:12,610 --> 00:38:15,270 And what we found was rather unsettling. 714 00:38:15,270 --> 00:38:17,390 And that is that you started out 715 00:38:17,390 --> 00:38:20,030 with these 1700 patches or so, 716 00:38:20,030 --> 00:38:23,860 within 20 years, half of those patches have been recleared. 717 00:38:23,860 --> 00:38:27,170 Within 35 years, 3/4 were gone. 718 00:38:27,170 --> 00:38:28,560 And by the time you go out 719 00:38:28,560 --> 00:38:31,223 to the length of the study that we looked at 720 00:38:31,223 --> 00:38:33,823 and the time-lapse that we have in imagery, 721 00:38:35,020 --> 00:38:39,453 almost 90% of these secondary forests have gone. 722 00:38:40,540 --> 00:38:44,530 So the biggest take-home I can give from this talk 723 00:38:44,530 --> 00:38:49,530 is to reevaluate these major commitments as nation states, 724 00:38:50,500 --> 00:38:54,420 as government and entities 725 00:38:54,420 --> 00:38:58,410 and non-government organizations working in this regard. 726 00:38:58,410 --> 00:39:00,130 And I'll pick on Costa Rica 727 00:39:00,130 --> 00:39:03,160 just because this whole talk was about Costa Rica, 728 00:39:03,160 --> 00:39:05,210 but Costa Rica pledged a million hectares 729 00:39:06,440 --> 00:39:09,373 of restored forest by 2020. 730 00:39:10,970 --> 00:39:13,360 In effect, that's a million hectares 731 00:39:13,360 --> 00:39:15,810 of zero-year-old forest, right? 732 00:39:15,810 --> 00:39:18,810 But the real pledge should be something like this, 733 00:39:18,810 --> 00:39:23,280 one million hectares of 100 year old forest by 2120, 734 00:39:23,280 --> 00:39:25,900 because that implies all the funding, 735 00:39:25,900 --> 00:39:30,900 all the monitoring, safeguarding of these restored areas 736 00:39:32,470 --> 00:39:34,800 for a long time span, 737 00:39:34,800 --> 00:39:38,420 where you can a pure carbon sequestration, biodiversity, 738 00:39:38,420 --> 00:39:40,140 and all these other ecosystem functions 739 00:39:40,140 --> 00:39:41,950 that we're trying to restore 740 00:39:41,950 --> 00:39:45,210 and be able to really say we actually restored forest 741 00:39:45,210 --> 00:39:47,410 as opposed to we actually just planted 742 00:39:47,410 --> 00:39:48,810 a million hectares of trees. 743 00:39:51,252 --> 00:39:52,100 And with that, 744 00:39:52,100 --> 00:39:57,100 I will thank many funders and collaborators 745 00:39:57,210 --> 00:39:59,250 who weren't on the first slide. 746 00:39:59,250 --> 00:40:01,940 And I guess I won't be taking any questions 747 00:40:01,940 --> 00:40:03,140 because there's no (indistinct), 748 00:40:03,140 --> 00:40:05,820 but thank you very much. 749 00:40:05,820 --> 00:40:07,210 - Thanks very much, Dr. Zahawi. 750 00:40:07,210 --> 00:40:09,030 Actually, I have two quick questions 751 00:40:09,030 --> 00:40:12,876 before I stop the recording. - Please do. 752 00:40:12,876 --> 00:40:14,910 - One's at a sort of global scale. 753 00:40:14,910 --> 00:40:17,380 Are you optimistic about the bond challenge 754 00:40:17,380 --> 00:40:21,780 and whether we are making solid progress 755 00:40:21,780 --> 00:40:26,283 in restoring ecosystems like you describe? 756 00:40:28,730 --> 00:40:30,310 - I think that's an excellent question. 757 00:40:30,310 --> 00:40:35,040 And I've been in the field now for 25, 30 odd years, 758 00:40:38,960 --> 00:40:41,870 depending on where you start the count 759 00:40:41,870 --> 00:40:46,470 in terms of my efforts and work in this field, 760 00:40:46,470 --> 00:40:50,880 both as a non-professional and then as a professional, 761 00:40:50,880 --> 00:40:54,440 and what I see is a sea change 762 00:40:54,440 --> 00:40:59,440 in how government organizations 763 00:40:59,750 --> 00:41:04,750 and how the world is focused on conservation efforts 764 00:41:07,600 --> 00:41:10,610 and in this case restoration 765 00:41:10,610 --> 00:41:14,060 and in doing so at these enormous scales. 766 00:41:14,060 --> 00:41:16,050 And there's a lot of interest in it 767 00:41:16,050 --> 00:41:21,050 and a lot of funding and many different initiatives, 768 00:41:21,210 --> 00:41:24,590 not just in land restoration, even marine efforts. 769 00:41:24,590 --> 00:41:28,360 I mean, you know, I'm talking to you here from Ecuador, 770 00:41:28,360 --> 00:41:29,200 from the Galapagos, 771 00:41:29,200 --> 00:41:32,460 where there was recent declaration of a new marine reserve 772 00:41:32,460 --> 00:41:35,160 that's 60,000 square kilometers 773 00:41:35,160 --> 00:41:39,260 with significant infrastructure being put in place 774 00:41:39,260 --> 00:41:43,660 to be able to monitor and manage that system going forward. 775 00:41:43,660 --> 00:41:48,660 So I see a lot of promise in the conversations we're having 776 00:41:50,800 --> 00:41:53,050 and that there's suddenly 777 00:41:53,050 --> 00:41:56,580 almost a glut of funding, if you will. 778 00:41:56,580 --> 00:41:59,840 What's missing is the ability, 779 00:41:59,840 --> 00:42:02,340 you know, and what I talked about here in my presentation, 780 00:42:02,340 --> 00:42:06,503 of really being able to answer that call properly. 781 00:42:07,480 --> 00:42:09,590 And then this last slide that I talked about, 782 00:42:09,590 --> 00:42:12,320 I think one of the biggest weaknesses 783 00:42:12,320 --> 00:42:17,220 is this inability to really underscore 784 00:42:17,220 --> 00:42:21,320 the importance of restoration as a long-term process. 785 00:42:21,320 --> 00:42:25,920 And it doesn't just involve two years 786 00:42:25,920 --> 00:42:28,653 of planting a zillion trees in the ground. 787 00:42:29,900 --> 00:42:32,503 I mean, I've been on funding, 788 00:42:33,770 --> 00:42:35,850 not boards, but recommendations, 789 00:42:35,850 --> 00:42:38,520 where basically there's one year of funding 790 00:42:38,520 --> 00:42:39,850 and all they were interested in 791 00:42:39,850 --> 00:42:41,890 was how many trees do you buy? 792 00:42:41,890 --> 00:42:44,570 And I said, you might as well not even give the funds 793 00:42:44,570 --> 00:42:49,570 because it's just you're gonna lose 98% of your seeds. 794 00:42:49,993 --> 00:42:52,443 - Yeah, it's a whole change in mindset, isn't it? 795 00:42:53,480 --> 00:42:54,610 - Total change in your mindset. 796 00:42:54,610 --> 00:42:55,683 And the problem is, 797 00:42:57,310 --> 00:42:59,380 the most attractive thing is to say, 798 00:42:59,380 --> 00:43:01,660 well, we planted 10,000 trees. 799 00:43:01,660 --> 00:43:03,630 It's not very exciting to say, 800 00:43:03,630 --> 00:43:08,450 well, we've gone out and monitored them for 25 years 801 00:43:08,450 --> 00:43:09,760 and they're growing, you know? 802 00:43:09,760 --> 00:43:12,370 I mean, but you could make that more exciting, 803 00:43:12,370 --> 00:43:13,340 we have to work at that. 804 00:43:13,340 --> 00:43:14,720 You have to talk about, 805 00:43:14,720 --> 00:43:17,210 well, we've sequestered so tons of carbon 806 00:43:17,210 --> 00:43:21,030 as a result of this effort that was started 25 years ago, 807 00:43:21,030 --> 00:43:24,390 or we suddenly have 350 species in this system 808 00:43:24,390 --> 00:43:27,782 where there was once 10 species of grass, 809 00:43:27,782 --> 00:43:30,420 and, you know, that kind of approach. 810 00:43:31,450 --> 00:43:34,300 - My second question is, clearly the Galapagos 811 00:43:34,300 --> 00:43:35,670 where you're currently stationed 812 00:43:35,670 --> 00:43:39,010 is quite a different ecosystem. 813 00:43:39,010 --> 00:43:42,870 Are you able to use any of the knowledge 814 00:43:42,870 --> 00:43:47,380 that you gained in your studies in Costa Rica 815 00:43:47,380 --> 00:43:49,890 for your work at the Charles Darwin Foundation 816 00:43:49,890 --> 00:43:51,853 and on the Galapagos? 817 00:43:54,818 --> 00:43:57,563 - As with everything, the answer is yes and no. 818 00:44:01,550 --> 00:44:03,930 Certainly I have a lot of experience, 819 00:44:03,930 --> 00:44:07,350 field experience and understanding, 820 00:44:07,350 --> 00:44:10,770 and some of that can be applied here. 821 00:44:10,770 --> 00:44:13,940 The trick with Galapagos is it's an island system, 822 00:44:13,940 --> 00:44:18,940 so you have to put on your lens of Hawaii 823 00:44:20,220 --> 00:44:22,290 when you're working here. 824 00:44:22,290 --> 00:44:24,504 And in other words, 825 00:44:24,504 --> 00:44:29,030 for those who don't know a lot about island systems, 826 00:44:29,030 --> 00:44:30,800 they're much more fragile. 827 00:44:30,800 --> 00:44:32,660 You've got a lot of endemic species, 828 00:44:32,660 --> 00:44:36,510 they've been isolated from mainland systems 829 00:44:36,510 --> 00:44:41,060 for evolutionary time, 830 00:44:41,060 --> 00:44:46,060 and in many cases, they are unable to compete for resources 831 00:44:48,050 --> 00:44:53,050 the same way forest systems can in Costa Rica or wherever. 832 00:44:57,730 --> 00:44:59,550 And so what I talked about 833 00:44:59,550 --> 00:45:01,750 where you have a degree of resilience 834 00:45:01,750 --> 00:45:04,150 in these systems in Costa Rica, 835 00:45:04,150 --> 00:45:07,100 you do not have that in the Galapagos. 836 00:45:07,100 --> 00:45:09,110 So you can't just say, 837 00:45:09,110 --> 00:45:12,530 okay, we're going to clear the system 838 00:45:12,530 --> 00:45:14,920 and all these native species are gonna come back. 839 00:45:14,920 --> 00:45:15,753 They're not. 840 00:45:15,753 --> 00:45:16,710 The problem with the Galapagos 841 00:45:16,710 --> 00:45:19,500 is you've got very aggressive invasive species 842 00:45:19,500 --> 00:45:20,887 and you have to actually manage that. 843 00:45:20,887 --> 00:45:24,630 And so it's a different set of criteria 844 00:45:24,630 --> 00:45:26,820 that need to be implemented here. 845 00:45:26,820 --> 00:45:31,000 The good thing is with this large-scale funding 846 00:45:31,000 --> 00:45:32,320 and long-term funding 847 00:45:32,320 --> 00:45:37,250 you can actually join a lot of these efforts together. 848 00:45:37,250 --> 00:45:40,390 So you can bring in funds that's long-term, 849 00:45:40,390 --> 00:45:43,090 such as carbon offset funding, for example, 850 00:45:43,090 --> 00:45:48,090 and do intervention in the Galapagos over the long term, 851 00:45:48,800 --> 00:45:51,040 much like you would do intervention in Costa Rica 852 00:45:51,040 --> 00:45:55,730 for 10 or 15 years until the system is getting into effect, 853 00:45:55,730 --> 00:45:57,520 but it would be a lot more maintenance 854 00:45:57,520 --> 00:45:59,370 and it would be a lot more expensive. 855 00:46:00,520 --> 00:46:02,730 - Well thanks very much for your time, Dr. Zahawi, 856 00:46:02,730 --> 00:46:05,470 and your kindness and generosity 857 00:46:05,470 --> 00:46:08,083 in allowing us to sort of rerecord this.