Collating information on restoration projects in the Wet Tropics

Member article: Centre for Rainforest Studies at The School for Field Studies

By Prof. Sigrid Heise-Pavlov,

Centre for Rainforest Studies at The School for Field Studies

Over the last decades, restoration of natural environments within the Wet Tropics gained more momentum as more and more communities, governmental and non-governmental organisations became involved and funding was made available. However, since Queensland has been named the “clearing capital of Australia” (SoE 2021, Reside et al. 2017), the long time it takes to restore original vegetation on cleared land makes it almost impossible to keep pace with land clearing. To counteract loss of native vegetation with restoration, we have to ensure that our restoration efforts will achieve the best outcome.

Success of restoration depends on many factors, for instance the seedling composition, spacing of seedlings, the way a restoration site was prepared, the application of water crystals and fertiliser, weed control, irrigation during the dry season, topography of the site, and climatic factors. This makes success experience-driven, and many restoration practitioners have accumulated an immense knowledge on how to tackle the various barriers of restoration in the Wet Tropics. Knowledge sharing becomes more and more essential to avoid “old mistakes” and to make restoration projects more effective and economically viable. Different methods are tested (e.g. see Freebody 2007, Preece et al. 2013), but the sheer amount of work involved in a restoration project often leaves no time for knowledge sharing. Moreover, there is often not enough time to collate and store data on factors that may have affected the success of a restoration project, for instance: did the seedlings receive water crystals at the planting stage or not; were seedlings planted during very wet conditions or in less wet conditions; which type of fertiliser was used; what was the previous land use of the restoration site. Or the information is stored at various organisations who were running the different projects. Having this information centrally available would not only help identify the most suitable and effective restoration practice for a site, it would also enable restoration researchers to track down factors that determined the outcome of a restoration project, let alone supporting chronosequence projects. Only with information on site- and planting-specific attributes and information on the progress of restoration projects can we develop restoration manuals that are tailored to the conditions of a site and allow effective and successful restoration of similar sites.

To assemble this information, we need a database in which site-specific information is collated and made available to restoration practitioners and researchers. In 2016, The School for Field Studies, Centre for Rainforest Studies (SFS-CRS), started the development of a Restoration Database that aimed to collate spatial and non-spatial information on every large community-driven restoration project on the Atherton Tablelands. SFS-CRS teaches American undergraduate students in environmental science and practical conservation methods. Teaching is field-based, and an opportunity arose to connect teaching of spatial tools (using GPS and GIS software) with the collation of data on restoration projects, since CRS students often participate in community-organised tree-plantings and have done so since 1997.

Since 2018, students collect spatial and non-spatial data of restoration projects which they assist at their initial planting stage. Spatial data are obtained by using a GPS to identify the outline of a restoration site. Once the site is projected on a map, ArcGIS and further map resources are used to calculate the area of the site and its perimeter, and to derive information on its average climate, its elevation, its soil type, its topography, and its distance to old growth forest, watercourses and roads (all of which affect the colonisation of a site by seeds and wildlife). Non-spatial data are collated by interviewing the organisers of the project about seedling spacing, the use of water crystals, fertilisers and mulch, funding sources, seedling sources, seedling composition; how the site was prepared, weather conditions during planting, who will maintain the project, the tenure of the site, etc., etc.

Currently, the database has 552 entries and is in the format of a GIS polygon shapefile, although its transformation into other databases with better search options was explored (Heise-Pavlov and Tng 2023).

In 2023, entries of the CRS-SFS database were reviewed and many ground-truthed. Information of 282 entries for which most spatial and non-spatial information was available were sent to RESTOR, the Global Hub for Nature Restoration and Conservation, for uploading. To the surprise of students and staff of CRS-SFS, only three entries of restoration projects on the Atherton Tablelands were found in RESTOR, which did certainly not represent the restoration efforts of the last decades.

The foundation of the Wet Tropics Alliance aims to assist in knowledge as well as resource sharing. A centralised database on restoration projects in the Wet Tropics would be of great benefit in achieving this goal. It would help practitioners as well as researchers to access essential data on existing projects for knowledge sharing and research. CRS-SFS’s database on restoration projects may be a base upon which a Wet Tropics restoration database can be built. CRS-SFS’s database is not comprehensive because some restoration projects go unaccounted for, despite well-established contacts between CRS-SFS and many of the leading restoration organisations that do restoration work on the Atherton Tablelands.

To develop a comprehensive database on restoration projects in the Wet Tropics, there are a few questions that need to be answered, for instance:

• Where is this database stored?

• Who is responsible for its updating?

• How can information be fed into the database?

• Who can access it?

• What information on a restoration project should be considered essential for such a database?

There is no doubt that a Restoration Project Database offers great benefits to future restoration in the Wet Tropics. And this will become even more relevant in light of climate change that may require adjustments and modifications of our restoration practices.

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Freebody K. (2007) Rainforest revegetation in the uplands of the Australian Wet Tropics: The Eacham Shire experience with planting models, outcomes and monitoring issues. Ecological Management & Restoration 8, 140-3.

Heise-Pavlov S. and Tng, D (2023) Documenting Restoration Efforts for Landscape Planning, Monitoring, Research, and Education in the Wet Tropics of Australia. - Ecological Restoration Vol. 41, Nos. 2–3

Preece N.D., van Oosterzee P. and Lawes M.J. (2013) Planting methods matter for cost-effective rainforest restoration Ecological Management and Restoration 14, 63-66.

Reside, A.E., J. Beher, A.J. Cosgrove, M.C. Evans, L. Seabrook, J.L., Silcock et al. 2017. Ecological consequences of land clearing and policy reform in Queensland. Pacific Conservation Biology 23:219–230.

SoE (2021) State of the Environment of Australia, 2021; Access via: https://www.dcceew.gov.au/environment/environment-information-australia/soe