Novel Ecosystems and Ecological Restoration Strategies

Novel ecosystems emerge when human activities, climatic shifts and biotic exchanges drive ecological assemblages beyond historical configurations, creating self‐sustaining systems without precedent in the regional record. Traditional restoration strategies have aimed to return degraded habitats to past reference states, yet accelerating environmental change and shifting baselines often render historical targets unattainable. In response, practitioners now adopt flexible approaches that integrate ecological theory, engineering design and stakeholder values to support ecosystem services in novel contexts. Key strategies include defining contemporary reference states based on current biodiversity patterns, harnessing emergent traits of foundational species to re‐establish self‐facilitation and applying adaptive management to navigate uncertainty. Interdisciplinary collaboration among ecologists, engineers, social scientists and local communities underpins successful interventions, from coastal vegetation projects that mimic natural feedback loops to urban greening schemes that valorise novel plant assemblages for heat mitigation. Globally, these approaches aim to secure carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling and cultural benefits in rapidly changing landscapes, acknowledging that pristine restoration may be less feasible than fostering resilient, multifunctional ecosystems in the Anthropocene.

Research from Nature Portfolio

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Novel Ecosystems and Ecological Restoration Strategies publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in novel ecosystems and ecological restoration strategies across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Novel ecosystem: A self‐maintaining ecological community and environmental conditions that have arisen from human alteration and lack historical precedent in the region.

Ecological restoration: The process of assisting recovery of degraded, damaged or destroyed ecosystems to improve their structure, function and resilience.

Emergent traits: Collective characteristics that appear only when organisms aggregate above a density or patch size threshold, enabling self‐facilitation and feedback loops.

Contemporary reference state: A restoration benchmark defined by current patterns of biodiversity and function rather than historical conditions, allowing measurable and adaptive targets.

Self‐facilitation: Positive interactions among organisms that enhance recruitment, growth or survival, often dependent on population density or spatial arrangement.

References

1. Expert preferences on options for biodiversity conservation under climate change. Global Environmental Change (2023).
2. Restoration ecology meets design-engineering: Mimicking emergent traits to restore feedback-driven ecosystems. The Science of The Total Environment (2023).
3. Including environmental and climatic considerations for sustainable coral reef restoration. PLOS Biology (2024).
4. Reference state and benchmark concepts for better biodiversity conservation in contemporary ecosystems. Global Change Biology (2020).