Practitioners' Perspectives on the Effectiveness of Restoration Methods for Southern Australia's Arid Ecosystems

Abstract

Restoration of arid vegetation is an essential and difficult task, making the selection of the right methods for restoration an important choice. One way to determine which methods would be most effective is by accessing the accumulated knowledge of restoration practitioners, which is often unreported in the scientific literature. This study created an online survey asking questions of practitioners on the effectiveness of different methods for arid restoration, including how effective they are at promoting restoration and their financial and labour inputs. The survey was distributed to arid restoration practitioners within Australia, with a focus on the southern areas, and found that the methods most commonly used are ones that appear most effective at promoting restoration and are generally the most highly recommended. The cost and labour input did not correlate with the most used or most recommended method, suggesting that these are secondary factors and are not necessarily the most important concerns for the survey respondents. While mechanical direct seeding was indicated to have lower financial and labour inputs, both it and hand-planting were indicated to be similar in restoration ability and were both highly recommended. Grazing control methods and chemical weed control were also indicated to be effective at restoration, likely due to damage that grazing and weed competition can inflict upon plantings. Pre-seeding treatments were found to be both effective at restoration and have low labour and cost requirements, making them one of the most highly recommended methods. Soil amendments, such as water-holding gels and biochar, despite being low-to-moderate in terms of cost and labour input, were not indicated to be effective at restoration and were subsequently not highly recommended. Though some general trends could be found, respondents also commonly pointed out that the choice of methods will often depend on the site-specific conditions.