Scoping the suitability of water-tolerant species of trees for swamp restorations across Australia and its Great Barrier Reef catchment
Canning, Adam D. (2025) Scoping the suitability of water-tolerant species of trees for swamp restorations across Australia and its Great Barrier Reef catchment. Restoration Ecology. e14375. (In Press)
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Abstract
Wetlands are vital for humanity and include some of the most productive, diverse, and service-rich ecosystems in the world. Service provided include food production (e.g., fish, birds, and vegetables), protection from flooding and storm surge inundation, provision of clean water and climate stability, and timber resources for construction. Despite these benefits, vast areas of wetlands have been drained across the globe, including in Australia. With growing awareness of the value of wetlands, there is increasing push to restore wetlands and the values they support, such as carbon sequestration. A major challenge for restoration practitioners is to identify what land parcels could be restored and what species they could support. This study scoped the environmental suitability of 125 water-tolerant species of trees across Australia, using random forest modeling to relate records observed within the Atlas of Living Australia database with spatial datasets of soil and climatic characteristics and water observations from space. Of the 125 species of trees examined, 105 species were modeled with excellent performance. Models were then used to predict tree suitability for existing wetlands nationally, as well as across potentially suitable restoration sites within the Great Barrier Reef catchment, given the strong push for wetland restoration to improve water quality. Within the Great Barrier Reef catchment, over 2200 land parcels covering over 20,000 ha were identified as being potentially suitable for restoration with diverse tree swamps. This study allows restoration practitioners to identify where swamp restoration could occur and potentially suitable trees for planting at those locations.
| Item ID: | 84819 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 1526-100X |
| Keywords: | diverse planting, ecosystem services, Melaleuca, regeneration, tree species distribution, wetlands |
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| Copyright Information: | © 2025 The Author(s). Restoration Ecology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Ecological Restoration. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. |
| Date Deposited: | 05 Mar 2025 23:53 |
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