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Barragan Altamirano, Dayana Gabriela

University of British Columbia

Nations around the world have committed to and invested in ambitious restoration initiatives that aim to fulfill multiple goals, including climate change mitigation and adaptation, biodiversity recovery, and poverty alleviation. Meeting these goals requires the commitment of multiple actors as well as suitable environmental conditions to guarantee the survival of vegetation in sites under restoration over time. My dissertation explores the challenges that influence the achievement of restoration goals. Using an interdisciplinary approach, I conceived and implemented four chapters spanning multiple organizational, spatial, and temporal scales. I focused on Ecuador, a South American country that made ambitious commitments to forest restoration under the global “Bonn Challenge” restoration initiative in 2014 and aims to meet its goal by 2030. In Chapter 2, I identified six socio-ecological factors that influence the achievement of restoration goals by conducting semi-structured interviews with restoration practitioners to elicit their experiences and perspectives. These results provide nuanced qualitative evidence on the challenges and opportunities for the implementation of restoration programs. In Chapter 3, I evaluated the future viability of trees in restoration sites under future climate change scenarios using bioclimatic models. I emphasized the importance of considering climate change projections for the selection of species and sites and using species native to the regions where the sites are located. Chapter 4 identifies the potential to build on the identification of ecosystem services of interest to local populations at sites prioritized by them for the formulation of multiple socio-ecological goals tailored for different types of landscapes, for which I facilitated focus groups and participatory mapping activities. Finally, in Chapter 5, I addressed the need for knowledge exchange between the Global North and South to promote informed decision-making. I present a project that showcases a collaborative and community-based model for knowledge translation. My dissertation has the potential to inform ongoing and future restoration programs and projects to help formulate and achieve their restoration goals, and therefore contribute to the mitigation of the serious effects of the socio-ecological threats that the planet faces.

Text

2024-07-17

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/88658

Forestry

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/