, 2007). Staggering outplanting or thinning across decades, perhaps, are ways to create temporal diversity. Another possibility is to accelerate or delay stand SCH-900776 development through density manipulation or interplanting. Hermann et al. (2013) provided an example of the approaches we have discussed. They used silvics of Pinus palustris and historical descriptions to restore a National Military Park in central Alabama, USA to

the structure and composition of the forest that likely surrounded an 1814 battlefield. They were guided by the decision matrix shown in Table 2 and expanded it to the landscape by first diagnosing initial conditions including condition of existing stands, location of isolated trees, and soil characteristics. They used soils information and dispersal distances of P. palustris to identify patches where natural regeneration, including seeds from isolated trees, could augment outplanting. Options considered were outplanting, fuel reduction by prescribed burning, and removal of off-site broadleaved species. The design

of future landscapes involves many more considerations than planting design, including reconciling competing visions and goals, allocating scarce resources, and how to evaluate different designs. These issues are taken up later, but it is important to consider that to be successful, the goals and values of people living in or near the land to be restored should be considered

as well as the programmatic goals of the organization funding the work. Elements of both top-down and bottom-up approaches will be useful in balancing competing selleck inhibitor visions and goals (Lamb, 2011 and Boedhihartono and Sayer, 2012). Ecological processes are physical, chemical, and biological actions or events linking organisms to their environment and involve transfers of material and energy through the landscape. Falk (2006) proposed a central emphasis on ecological functions and ecosystem processes as the foundation of restoration research and practice. He proposed replacing reference sites with reference dynamics, where underlying mechanisms of change are Bay 11-7085 the primary factors. These mechanisms might be natural (Stringham et al., 2003) or anthropomorphic (Doren et al., 2009), which influences the way ecological processes are defined and used in different approaches to restoration. Herrick et al. (2006) provided an example from fire-adapted forest and savanna ecosystems where the fire regime depends on the composition, structure, and spatial arrangement of the vegetation, as well as ignition sources. A useful categorization defines four primary processes: the hydrologic cycle, biogeochemical cycles, energetics (energy capture and the carbon cycle), and disturbances. These processes affect vegetation and animal population dynamics (Bestelmeyer et al., 2006 and Turner, 2010), including gene flows (Banks et al., 2013).