Climate-adjusted provenancing: a strategy for climate-resilient ecological restoration

By S. Prober, M. Byrne, Elizabeth H. McLean, Dorothy Steane, Brad M. Potts, R. Vaillancourt, W. Stock. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 2015

328 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Investments in ecological restoration are estimated at $US 2 trillion per annum worldwide and are increasing rapidly ( Cunningham, 2008 ; Williams et al., 2014 ). These investments are occurring in an environment of accelerated climate change that is projected to continue into the next century, yet they currently take little account of such change. This has significant implications for the long-term success of restoration plantings across millions of hectares, with germplasm used in current restoration efforts potentially poorly-adapted to future climates. New approaches that optimize the climate-resilience of these restoration efforts are thus essential ( Breed et al., 2013 ; Williams et al., 2014 ; Havens et al., 2015 ). A promising, but as yet untapped, opportunity for enhancing the climate-resilience of restoration investments rests in the exploitation of natural genetic variability of plant species. The capacity of plants to adapt to environmental change through plasticity, selection, or gene flow is only beginning to be explored ( Nicotra et al., 2010 ; Hoffmann and Sgro, 2011 ; Aitken and Whitlock, 2013 ; Alberto et al., 2013 ). Informed strategies for sourcing germplasm that capitalize on inherent genetic diversity and adaptive capacity offer significant promise for improving the success of extensive plantings to restore landscapes that are eroded, salinized, desertified, highly fragmented or degraded through introduced competitors, herbivores, or diseases. Here we describe a new strategy for sourcing germplasm for ecological restoration to promote adaptation in a changing climate. We argue that a "climate-adjusted" provenancing strategy (Figure 1A ) should combine genetic diversity and adaptability, targeting projected climate change directions whilst allowing for uncertainty in such projections as well as unforeseen selective agents. We introduce climate-adjusted provenancing in the context of historical approaches to provenancing, and highlight emerging research to test this strategy.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Global and Planetary Change, Information Systems and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b0013b9bb8ccb9f7ca59395520aaeb024f5a8b37

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecological Modeling

1. A. Bucharova
2. Andrew Lowe
3. M. Byrne
4. W. Durka
5. S. Williams
6. A. Hoffmann
7. N. Andrew
8. D. Bergstrom

In Global and Planetary Change

1. Andrew Lowe
2. M. Byrne
3. S. Williams
4. A. Hoffmann
5. N. Andrew
6. D. Bergstrom
7. J. Kollmann
8. O. Bossdorf

Citations in the corpus

• Bridging the gap: a genetic assessment framework for population‐level threatened plant conservation prioritization and decision‐making (2016, background): “Further, predictive introduction of ‘climate-adapted’ genes or individuals to threatened populations or plant introductions into predicted future climate niches (assisted migration) have also been suggested as potential management strategies for adaptation to climate change (McLachlan et al., 2007; ”
• Enhancing climate change resilience of ecological restoration — A framework for action (2021, background): “However, in the context of a rapidly changing environment this should be challenged as local provenance may be poorly adapted to future climates and disturbance regimes (Prober et al., 2015).”
• Mix and match: regional admixture provenancing strikes a balance among different seed-sourcing strategies for ecological restoration (2018, positive): “2011) recommends the use of genotypes from areas that have similar climates as the one predicted for the target locality, whereas climate-adjusted provenancing (Prober et al. 2015) suggests introduction of several non-local ecotypes sourced along a climatic gradient to include higher genetic diversi”
• Impacts of recent climate change on terrestrial flora and fauna: Some emerging Australian examples (2018, background): “Adaptive management strategies, such as assisted gene migration (Aitken & Whitlock 2013) and cli-mate-adjusted provenancing (Prober et al. 2015), may help mitigate the extent of forest dieback associated with climate change and maintain ecosystem function (Lunt et al. 2013).”