OnTREC - Tropical Rainforest Ecosystem Responses to Restoration
KEY POINTS- A particular focus on the interaction between terrestrial and aquatic systems
- Provides insights into how restoration efforts can be evaluated
Project overview
Participants
More related research
Global goals
- 13. Climate action
- 15. Life on land
Short summary
The project investigates how tropical rainforest ecosystems recover following restoration. Through field studies in Borneo and modeling, the project examines biodiversity, ecosystem processes, and land-water interactions to strengthen future restoration efforts.
Tropical rainforests harbour exceptional biological diversity and are among the most complex ecosystems on Earth. At the same time, extensive deforestation, agriculture and other forms of exploitation have caused large areas of rainforest to be lost or degraded, with severe consequences for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.
The Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework sets global goals to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2050, with the protection and restoration of degraded ecosystems as central components. Rainforest restoration often focuses on re-establishing tree communities. However, rainforest ecosystems comprise far more than trees, and we still know relatively little about how the broader ecosystem, including its biodiversity, responds to this type of restoration. When trees return – does the rest of the ecosystem follow, and how does the rate of recovery relate to the 2050 goals?
In the project OnTREC – Tropical Rainforest Ecosystem Responses to Restoration, we investigate these questions through field studies on Borneo of tree and frog communities, other organism groups, and ecosystem environmental conditions, and combine these data with mathematical modelling to better understand complex relationships. We study both how different components of ecosystems recover and which ecological processes underlie this recovery. A particular focus is on interactions between terrestrial and aquatic systems within small-stream catchments, and between local environmental conditions and regional processes such as species dispersal and landscape connectivity.
An important part of the research is conducted in the INIKEA restoration area in Sabah, Borneo, and in collaboration with The Living Rainforest Restoration Lab, where approximately 25 years of restoration history provide an unusual opportunity to study long-term ecological recovery – and a perspective on the approximately 25 years remaining towards the Kunming–Montreal Framework’s 2050 goals.
The aim is to contribute knowledge on how restoration can be evaluated and improved to strengthen biodiversity, ecological integrity, and long-term functioning rainforest ecosystems for the benefit of both nature and people.