Grant: Strategic Workshops Program

Mining is an important and growing industry in Canada. Environmental laws and regulations govern mining, including environmental assessment, management and reclamation. There is a critical need to work with the mining industry to develop best management practices for successful ecosystem restoration. The majority of restoration research and practice has focused on re-establishing the plant community, with the underlying assumption that the animal and micro-biotic communities will naturally colonize following the establishment of the plant community. We see this as a significant gap in restoration ecology. Ecosystem restoration is primarily goal-oriented, and therefore it is important to plan the entire ecosystem, not just the plant community, in restoration projects. An understanding of the entire food web is essential because it intersects population, community, and ecosystem ecology to help inform restoration ecology. Here, we propose to study grassland restoration from a whole-ecosystem, food web-driven perspective. The primary objectives of our workshop will be to: (i) summarize the current state of knowledge of food web theory as it relates to ecosystem restoration; (ii) identify weaknesses and gaps in our knowledge of how trophic interactions operate within a framework of ecological succession; and (iii) establish research priorities with a focus on the implications and application of food web theory to management guidelines and policy decisions in temperate grassland restoration.