Introduction: Key concepts and research questions in restoration ecology

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment produced a stark picture of the impact of human activities, principally land conversion and global climate change, on the status and function of the Earth’s natural capital from which ecosystem goods and services flow and on which sustainable human well-being depends.  With the pressing need to go beyond conservation into ecosystem restoration to facilitate the repair of ecosystem structure and function at all scales from the soil crumb to the globe, having a clear set of guiding concepts, based on sound and rigorous science, to facilitate efficient and sustainable action is of paramount importance.  This introduction will describe why it is important to have such guiding principles, introduce a wider audience to the SERI Primer and Nine Attributes of a restored ecosystem, and some background as to how they came about and why we need to look at them anew, and what we hope to accomplish in this session.