How will restorationists adapt to climate change?

The rapid advance of anthropogenic climate change poses difficult challenges to restoration practitioners and indeed to the very idea of restoration. A traditional reliance on historical references is shifting to responsive and proactive modes. The judicious creation of habitats designed to conserve and protect these assemblages in new areas made appropriate by changing biophysical conditions and the restoration of natural capital will become compelling objectives. Deliberate programs to mitigate and reverse climate change globally (e.g., carbon sequestration) and locally (modification of specific climate conditions) may also fall under the rubric of restoration. Practitioners will be compelled to detach from traditional historical references, and will be drawn by the need to address larger spatial extents and longer temporal intervals. The ethical burdens will magnify as we increasingly make proxy decisions for other species without the basic goal of historical fidelity: Where will ecosystem restoration end and ecosystem creation begin? Should climate-proofed ecosystems emphasize species rarity or diversity? How effective will we be in separating out global climate effects from other more local influences? How much intervention is appropriate? Will people lose interest in conservation and restoration and become inured to designer ecosystems? I propose these quandaries and others are best addressed by reinvigorating our commitment to history. However, instead of treating historical knowledge artifactually by fixing on specific reference points, the value of history is in its contribution to understanding the long-range processes and qualities of an ecosystem. Perhaps more important is the role that history plays in tempering human ambition and reminding us that ecosystems are more complex than we can know.