Abstract
Ecological restoration and reclamation has become a large industry in the United States. However, the industry lacks generalizable planning processes to identify and mitigate the wide-ranging factors capable of driving unsatisfactory outcomes, especially on remediation sites. In this paper, we outline the potential challenges arising from planning shortcomings and propose a structured planning and evaluation process aimed at increasing the probability of achieving acceptable reclamation outcomes. Our proposed four-step planning process 1) establishes criteria to evaluate competing design concepts, 2) defines restoration success across five critical dimensions, 3) balances operational constraints and optimizes across ecological gradients, and 4) applies pre-determined evaluation criteria to select a final reclamation concept. We suggest that an ecologist should be brought into planning reclamation for remediation projects from the onset when the range of potential reclamation strategies is the broadest and potential to plan successful outcomes is the highest. Finally, we propose potential next steps to operationalize concepts presented herein.
This open access article is distributed under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) and is freely available online at:http://jhr.uwpress.org