Landscape and Urban Planning 100 (2011) 407–410 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Landscape and Urban Planning journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landurbplan Restore, repair or reinvent: Options for sustainable landscapes in a changing climate Leonie Seabrook ∗ , Clive A. Mcalpine, Michiala E. Bowen The University of Queensland, Centre for Spatial Environmental Research, School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Management, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia article info Article history: Available online 3 March 2011 Keywords: Restoration Novel ecosystems Landscape change Ecosystem function abstract Globally, land use and land cover changes to provide resources for human society have led to loss of biodiversity and declines in ecosystem services. Climate change will compound these impacts. Ecological restoration can reverse environmental degradation and is starting to restore ecological services, as well as help mitigate climate change. Although this may be an anathema to some, we must systematically assess and proactively redesign and manage the landscapes we inhabit so they can continue to provide ecosys- tem services essential for all species, including humans. We define three restoration pathways based largely on existing land use and the degree of modification: restoration for areas of natural ecosystems; repair for production landscapes; and reinvention for urban areas. Challenges and research priorities include understanding: the effects of mean climate change and climate extremes on species’ distribution and ecosystem composition; how restoration can be used for carbon sequestration; the effects of prox- imate and endogenous drivers on landscape change; how to better bio-design landscapes for multiple functions; integration of different scales of restoration planning and design; and the establishment of long-term monitoring and adaptive management. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The majority of the Earth’s surface and its net primary pro- ductivity are now used to provide resources for human societies. Centuries of unsustainable land use have led to the loss of biodi- versity, changes in hydrological systems and regional climates, and declines in many of the ecosystem services that are essential for life. In this 100th edition of Landscape and Urban Planning, we consider the role that ecological restoration can play in mitigat- ing the damage to ecosystems caused by land use and land cover change, while providing significant societal benefits in terms of quality of life, continuing availability of resources and reduction of the social and economic costs caused by degradation of ecosys- tem services. In view of the link between deforestation and climate change, landscape restoration can also be an effective method to mitigate or reverse the impacts of increasing CO 2 levels, a factor recognised in carbon reduction schemes based on reducing defor- estation such as REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). However, achieving sustainable outcomes through landscape restoration and proactive management will become increasingly ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 7 33653535. E-mail addresses: l.seabrook@uq.edu.au (L. Seabrook), c.mcalpine@uq.edu.au (C.A. Mcalpine), michiala.bowen@uqconnect.edu.au (M.E. Bowen). difficult beyond 2050. This date has been identified by a number of studies as the approximate time by which continued business- as-usual greenhouse gas emissions would provoke catastrophic environmental and socio-economic impacts. The rapid pace of changing climate suggests that we need to adjust our restoration goals to be predominantly forward thinking, while being guided by our understanding of past conditions (Jackson and Hobbs, 2009). As a matter of urgency, we must use restoration to systematically assess, redesign and proactively manage many of the landscapes we inhabit so they can continue to provide the services essential for all species, including ourselves. 2. Restoration pathways Historically, the target of many restoration projects was to return modified or degraded ecosystems to a pre-disturbance state. However, the combination of degraded and fragmented ecosys- tems, which result in altered biotic and abiotic conditions, plus the compounding pressures of climate change, mean that in many landscapes it will be impossible to repair the impacts of unsustain- able land use practices by returning ecosystems to some former state. In addition, ecosystems continually undergo changes in their structure, composition and functioning as a result of complex interactions of species, communities, climate change and climate variability. Over time, such changes alter species’ abundances and cause range shifts that lead to new mixes of species, with grad- 0169-2046/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2011.02.015