Hua Jinguo, Wang Wenyue, Huo Jinyu, Wu Lin, Huang Lingfeng, Zhong Hongtao
Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education for Coastal and Wetland Ecosystems, College of the Environment and Ecology Xiamen University Xiamen Fujian China.
College of Horticulture and Forestry Huazhong Agricultural University Wuhan Hubei China.
Ecol Evol. 2025 Apr 25;15(4):e71172. doi: 10.1002/ece3.71172. eCollection 2025 Apr.
Strategies for restoring degraded ecosystems vary widely in the levels of human intervention. It has commonly been assumed that recovery with artificial inputs would be quicker and more efficient. However, is this truly the situation? We conducted a meta-analysis to evaluate the differences and applicability between ecological restoration and ecological rehabilitation. Relationships between soil phosphorus content, plant diversity, and soil microbial diversity were analyzed using 463 valid experimental data points collected from 72 publications. The results indicated that in grassland ecosystems, ecological restoration outperformed rehabilitation by 35%, 68%, 38%, and 48% in belowground biomass, community coverage, plant richness, and Shannon diversity, respectively. In forests, rehabilitation trailed behind restoration by 58%, 26%, and 92% in belowground biomass, Simpson diversity, and bacterial Shannon diversity. Furthermore, there was minimal difference in the recovery mode among different fungal and bacterial phyla. Rehabilitation demonstrated lower stability and efficiency in long-term phosphorus cycling compared to restoration. Overall, ecological restoration offers more stable and efficient long-term phosphorus cycling, thereby questioning the effectiveness of ecological rehabilitation for sustainable ecosystem recovery, especially for species diversity and phosphorus cycling.
恢复退化生态系统的策略在人类干预程度上差异很大。人们通常认为，人工投入下的恢复会更快、更有效。然而，实际情况真的如此吗？我们进行了一项荟萃分析，以评估生态恢复和生态修复之间的差异及适用性。利用从72篇出版物中收集的463个有效实验数据点，分析了土壤磷含量、植物多样性和土壤微生物多样性之间的关系。结果表明，在草原生态系统中，生态恢复在地下生物量、群落覆盖度、植物丰富度和香农多样性方面分别比生态修复高出35%、68%、38%和48%。在森林中，生态修复在地下生物量、辛普森多样性和细菌香农多样性方面分别比生态恢复落后58%、26%和92%。此外，不同真菌和细菌门类之间的恢复模式差异极小。与生态恢复相比，生态修复在长期磷循环中表现出较低的稳定性和效率。总体而言，生态恢复提供了更稳定、高效的长期磷循环，从而质疑了生态修复对可持续生态系统恢复的有效性，尤其是对物种多样性和磷循环而言。
