Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, CA, 95616, USA.
Ecol Lett. 2014 Jan;17(1):28-35. doi: 10.1111/ele.12199. Epub 2013 Nov 8.
A variety of ecological systems around the world have been damaged in recent years, either by natural factors such as invasive species, storms and global change or by direct human activities such as overfishing and water pollution. Restoration of these systems to provide ecosystem services entails significant economic benefits. Thus, choosing how and when to restore in an optimal fashion is important, but has not been well studied. Here we examine a general model where population growth can be induced or accelerated by investing in active restoration. We show that the most cost-effective method to restore an ecosystem dictates investment until the population approaches an 'economic restoration threshold', a density above which the ecosystem should be left to recover naturally. Therefore, determining this threshold is a key general approach for guiding efficient restoration management, and we demonstrate how to calculate this threshold for both deterministic and stochastic ecosystems.
近年来，世界各地的各种生态系统都受到了破坏，这些破坏可能是由自然因素如入侵物种、风暴和全球变化造成的，也可能是由人类的直接活动如过度捕捞和水污染造成的。为了提供生态系统服务而对这些系统进行恢复需要付出巨大的经济代价。因此，选择如何以及何时以最佳方式进行恢复非常重要，但目前对此研究还不够充分。在这里，我们研究了一个一般模型，即在主动恢复中进行投资可以诱导或加速种群增长。我们表明，恢复生态系统的最具成本效益的方法是进行投资，直到种群达到一个“经济恢复阈值”，即种群密度超过这个阈值后，就应该让生态系统自然恢复。因此，确定这个阈值是指导高效恢复管理的一个重要的通用方法，我们展示了如何为确定性和随机生态系统计算这个阈值。
