Data from: Restoration and repair of Earth's damaged ecosystems

Data from: Restoration and repair of Earth's damaged ecosystems – https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.2577  Abstract Given that few ecosystems on Earth have been unaffected by humans, restoring them holds great promise for stemming the biodiversity crisis and ensuring ecosystem services are provided to humanity. Nonetheless, few studies have documented the recovery of ecosystems globally or the rates at which ecosystems recover. Even fewer have addressed the added benefit of actively restoring ecosystems versus allowing them to recover without human intervention following the cessation of a disturbance. Our meta analysis of 400 studies worldwide that document recovery from large-scale disturbances, such as oil spills, agriculture, and logging, suggests that though ecosystems are progressing towards recovery following disturbances, they rarely recover completely. This result reinforces conservation of intact ecosystems as a key strategy for protecting biodiversity. Recovery rates slowed down with time since the disturbance ended, suggesting that the final stages of recovery are the most challenging to achieve. Active restoration did not result in faster or more complete recovery than simply ending the disturbances ecosystems face. Our results on the added benefit of restoration must be interpreted cautiously, because few studies directly compared different restoration actions in the same location after the same disturbance. The lack of consistent value added of active restoration following disturbance suggests that passive recovery should be considered as a first option; if recovery is slow then active restoration actions should be better tailored to overcome specific obstacles to recovery and achieve restoration goals. We call for more strategic investment of limited restoration resources into innovative collaborative efforts between scientists, local communities, and practitioners to develop restoration techniques that are ecologically, economically, and socially viable. Usage Notes Restoration and recovery studies metadata Included in this file are all of the data from restoration studies used by the paper "Restoration and repair of Earth's damaged ecosystems." Columns include: ID - identifier number for each RV, Citation - the study data were taken from, RV - the variable measured, LifeFormBroad - the type of organism/function measured by the RV, MetricType - what type of measurement, Metric.for.merge - used to merge datasets, not used in analysis, HabitatCat - habitat category, DisturbCat - disturbance category, AllActivities - what type of restoration activity was used, ActiveRes - whether or not restoration was active, Goal - reference point for RV, Goal.upper.error.bar - upper error value for reference point, Goal.lower.error.bar - lower error value for reference point, Goal.type.of.error - type of error statistic used for reference point, Goal.Sample.size - sample size of Goal RV, Start - value of RV at the start of the study, Start.upper.error.bar - upper error value for Start value, Start.lower.error.bar - lower error value for start value, Start.type.of.error - type of error statistic used for Start, End- value of RV at the end of the study, End.upper.error.bar - upper error value for End value, End.lower.error.bar - lower error value for End value, End.type.of.error - type of error statistic used for End, End.Sample.size - sample size of End, TimeSince - time since disturbance ended, VID - internally used ID number, CID - internally used ID number, FineMetric - more specific type of measurement, CurrentMetricType - type of measurement used in analysis, Year.start.data.were.taken - as described, Year.end.data.were.taken - as described, Year.perturbation.ended - year the disturbance in the study ended, Control - what type of reference was used by the study, DisturbDurat_yrs - how long the disturbance lasted in years, Latitude - latitude of study site, Longitude - longitude of study site, ResponseRatio - response ratio of the RV, Resilience - recovery rate of the RV, asinhResilience - arcsin-h transformed recovery rate of the RV, absLat - absolute value of Latitude, distMag - disturbance magnitude of RV, PA - restoration type (passive/active) of the RV, ln_distMag - natural log of disturbance magnitude of RV, Recovered - whether or not the ResponseRatio of the RV was > 0. latdata.csv