Terrestrial Ecosystem Restoration Increases Biodiversity and Reduces Variability

This meta-analysis provides strong evidence that terrestrial ecosystem restoration generally improves biodiversity outcomes and also makes those outcomes more stable over time. The study compares restored sites with unrestored degraded sites and reports that restoration actions increased biodiversity by an average of 20% while reducing biodiversity variability by an average of 14%. It also found that as restored sites aged, mean biodiversity increased and variability decreased relative to unrestored sites, suggesting that restoration benefits can strengthen as ecological recovery proceeds. These findings are especially important because they go beyond a simple yes-or-no question of whether restoration works; they show that restoration can improve both average ecological condition and resilience in the sense of reduced fluctuation.

For practitioners, the practical implication is that restoration is not only about recovering species richness, but also about building more predictable and potentially more resilient ecosystems. The paper notes that reference sites still had the highest mean biodiversity and the least variability, which matters for setting realistic targets: restoration can move degraded sites toward reference conditions, but may not fully replicate them in the short term. The study also reports a roughly 0.6% increase in biodiversity per year in restored sites relative to unrestored sites, indicating that restoration gains can accumulate gradually rather than appearing immediately.

This article is useful for biodiversity restoration planning, project evaluation, and policy justification because it quantifies effects across many terrestrial systems. It is particularly relevant if you need evidence for the effectiveness of restoration interventions, the importance of monitoring over time, or the value of tracking variability rather than only mean outcomes. The research does not provide a one-size-fits-all field method, but it offers a robust empirical basis for prioritizing restoration investment and for explaining why long-term stewardship matters in ecosystem recovery.