Legacy effects on restoration outcomes

Task 4.1: Generate and process the historical context data (INRAE)

This task will likely benefit from GIS-based works carried out in WP3. We will use several databases at European spatial extent (Table 3) to allow a general comparison across restored sites. More precise data at national level will also be considered. We will depict land use conversion at catchment and sub-catchment scales over the last century using model outputs from the HILDA project (Historic Land Dynamics Assessment: Models of Geo-Information Science and Remote Sensing; Fuchs et al. 2013). At these scales, we will also consider the evolution of human population density (GHSL, European Commission) as an indirect driver of ecological and societal outcomes of restoration. We will quantify former freshwater biodiversity, especially the regional species pool (based on Freshwater Information Platform), that has been shaped by historical constraints and can in turn influence current biodiversity. Given the large geographical extent covered by our dataset of restoration sites, we expect the streams to have experienced different and more or less old anthropic alterations (e.g. mills, timber floating, intensive agriculture, etc.). We will identify the approximate age and nature of former human activities that modified and affected the ecological stream states and potentially influenced its current societal perception. To do so, we will gather data at a regional scale using both literature review and knowledge of local stakeholders (WP6). Finally, we will build a site score accounting for the cumulative number of human alterations and their ages as a way to weigh legacies in the analysis.

Task 4.2: Analyse the relationships between historical variables and restoration outcomes (INRAE)

We will quantify the relationships between the historical variables generated in Task 4.1 and restoration outcomes metrics. This step will require proper statistical methods and tools identified and used in WP3. A particular effort will be put to hierarchically classify the relative importance of each variable, by boosted regression trees. 

Task 4.3: Test the interactions between historical and contemporary spatial context variables on restoration outcomes (INRAE, WEnR, EAWAG)

Legacy effects alone could weakly influence restoration outcomes whereas their interactions with contemporary drivers could be determining. Thus, we will perform the same analysis as in WP3, but including the historical variables to assess the combined effects and relative weights of contemporary and historical contexts on ecological and societal restoration outcomes