Restoration ecology meets design-engineering: Mimicking emergent traits to restore feedback-driven ecosystems

Ralph J.M. Temmink; Christine Angelini; Martijn Verkuijl; Tjisse van der Heide

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.166460

Restoration ecology meets design-engineering: Mimicking emergent traits to restore feedback-driven ecosystems

Ralph J.M. Temmink^*, Christine Angelini, Martijn Verkuijl, Tjisse van der Heide

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article › peer-review

Abstract

Ecosystems shaped by habitat-modifying organisms such as reefs, vegetated coastal systems and peatlands, provide valuable ecosystem services, such as carbon storage and coastal protection. However, they are declining worldwide. Ecosystem restoration is a key tool for mitigating these losses but has proven failure-prone, because ecosystem stability often hinges on self-facilitation generated by emergent traits from habitat modifiers. Emergent traits are not expressed by the single individual, but emerge at the level of an aggregation: a minimum patch-size or density-threshold must be exceeded to generate self-facilitation. Self-facilitation has been successfully harnessed for restoration by clumping transplanted organisms, but requires large amounts of often-limiting and costly donor material. Recent advancements highlight that kickstarting self-facilitation by mimicking emergent traits can similarly increase restoration success. Here, we provide a framework for combining expertise from ecologists, engineers and industrial product designers to transition from trial-and-error to emergent trait design-based, cost-efficient approaches to support large-scale restoration.

Original language	English
Article number	166460
Number of pages	11
Journal	Science of the Total Environment
Volume	902
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.166460
Publication status	Published - 1 Dec 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We would like to express our gratitude to the students from Windesheim who worked on various design projects and provided us with valuable insights on industrial product design principles. Additionally, we extend our thanks to Ton Markus for his exceptional figure design. T.v.d.H. was funded by NWO/TTW-Vidi grant 16588. C.A. was supported by NSF CAREER (#1652628) and US Army Corps of Engineers Engineering Research and Development Center Grant (#W912HZ-21-2-0035). R.J.M.T. and T.v.d.H. were funded by ‘Het Waddenfonds’ (WF-2022/237835).

Funding Information:
We would like to express our gratitude to the students from Windesheim who worked on various design projects and provided us with valuable insights on industrial product design principles. Additionally, we extend our thanks to Ton Markus for his exceptional figure design. T.v.d.H. was funded by NWO / TTW-Vidi grant 16588 . C.A. was supported by NSF CAREER (#1652628) and US Army Corps of Engineers Engineering Research and Development Center Grant (# W912HZ-21-2-0035 ). R.J.M.T. and T.v.d.H. were funded by ‘ Het Waddenfonds ’ ( WF-2022/237835 ).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors

Keywords

Restoration
Facilitation
Positive feedbacks
Trait-based
Engineering
Design

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1-s2.0-S0048969723050854-mainFinal published version, 4.37 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "Restoration ecology meets design-engineering: Mimicking emergent traits to restore feedback-driven ecosystems",

abstract = "Ecosystems shaped by habitat-modifying organisms such as reefs, vegetated coastal systems and peatlands, provide valuable ecosystem services, such as carbon storage and coastal protection. However, they are declining worldwide. Ecosystem restoration is a key tool for mitigating these losses but has proven failure-prone, because ecosystem stability often hinges on self-facilitation generated by emergent traits from habitat modifiers. Emergent traits are not expressed by the single individual, but emerge at the level of an aggregation: a minimum patch-size or density-threshold must be exceeded to generate self-facilitation. Self-facilitation has been successfully harnessed for restoration by clumping transplanted organisms, but requires large amounts of often-limiting and costly donor material. Recent advancements highlight that kickstarting self-facilitation by mimicking emergent traits can similarly increase restoration success. Here, we provide a framework for combining expertise from ecologists, engineers and industrial product designers to transition from trial-and-error to emergent trait design-based, cost-efficient approaches to support large-scale restoration.",

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note = "Funding Information: We would like to express our gratitude to the students from Windesheim who worked on various design projects and provided us with valuable insights on industrial product design principles. Additionally, we extend our thanks to Ton Markus for his exceptional figure design. T.v.d.H. was funded by NWO/TTW-Vidi grant 16588. C.A. was supported by NSF CAREER (#1652628) and US Army Corps of Engineers Engineering Research and Development Center Grant (#W912HZ-21-2-0035). R.J.M.T. and T.v.d.H. were funded by {\textquoteleft}Het Waddenfonds{\textquoteright} (WF-2022/237835). Funding Information: We would like to express our gratitude to the students from Windesheim who worked on various design projects and provided us with valuable insights on industrial product design principles. Additionally, we extend our thanks to Ton Markus for his exceptional figure design. T.v.d.H. was funded by NWO / TTW-Vidi grant 16588 . C.A. was supported by NSF CAREER (#1652628) and US Army Corps of Engineers Engineering Research and Development Center Grant (# W912HZ-21-2-0035 ). R.J.M.T. and T.v.d.H. were funded by {\textquoteleft} Het Waddenfonds {\textquoteright} ( WF-2022/237835 ). Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2023 The Authors",

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AU - van der Heide, Tjisse

N1 - Funding Information: We would like to express our gratitude to the students from Windesheim who worked on various design projects and provided us with valuable insights on industrial product design principles. Additionally, we extend our thanks to Ton Markus for his exceptional figure design. T.v.d.H. was funded by NWO/TTW-Vidi grant 16588. C.A. was supported by NSF CAREER (#1652628) and US Army Corps of Engineers Engineering Research and Development Center Grant (#W912HZ-21-2-0035). R.J.M.T. and T.v.d.H. were funded by ‘Het Waddenfonds’ (WF-2022/237835). Funding Information: We would like to express our gratitude to the students from Windesheim who worked on various design projects and provided us with valuable insights on industrial product design principles. Additionally, we extend our thanks to Ton Markus for his exceptional figure design. T.v.d.H. was funded by NWO / TTW-Vidi grant 16588 . C.A. was supported by NSF CAREER (#1652628) and US Army Corps of Engineers Engineering Research and Development Center Grant (# W912HZ-21-2-0035 ). R.J.M.T. and T.v.d.H. were funded by ‘ Het Waddenfonds ’ ( WF-2022/237835 ). Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Authors

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ER -

Restoration ecology meets design-engineering: Mimicking emergent traits to restore feedback-driven ecosystems

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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