Natural area managers face difficult decisions about how much money to allocate to what restoration actions and to ensure that public expenditure on land restoration is cost effective, efficient and transparent. In our study, published in Ecological Applications, we develop a ‘roadmap’ for investment in land restoration. Our approach explicitly considers space, time and their interaction, in relation to ecological outcomes and restoration costs. It will enable land managers to: (1) forecast landscape-scale outcomes of management strategies over long timeframes; (2) address the question of how long it will take and how much it will cost to achieve specific outcomes; and (3) explore potential trade-offs in outcomes among alternative management strategies.

We have developed a decision support tool and demonstrated how it can assist managers to navigate a complex suite of factors to optimize selection of restoration sites and project the timeframe and resources required. Our decision support tool is fit for purpose for developing a restoration roadmap from scratch or for improving the cost-effectiveness of future investments.

For more information read the study:

Shoo, L.P., Catterall, C.P., Beyer, H.L., Cockbain, P., Duncan, M., Robson, T., Roche, D., Taylor, H., White, Z. and Wilson, K., 2021. Smart allocation of restoration funds over space and time. Ecological Applications, 31(8): e02448. https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.2448