Building a landscape ecology pathway forward to restore ecosystem in highly urbanized areas

Ecosystem restoration is a huge task for ecosystem management in the context of rapid urbanization processes from regional governance to global ecosystem restoration in the new era. Significant ecological restoration efforts are underway to improve the ecological quality in highly urbanized areas. However, the path forward is far from clear for those who wish to apply these approaches to manage the urban ecosystem. In this study, we present five core dimensions to guide a landscape-scale management approach to restore ecosystems, with the objective of integrating restoration targets, spatial identification, planning and projects, monitoring and evaluation across the whole ecological restoration. We illustrate some key steps of our approach to landscape-scale ecosystem management through case tudies from Shenzhen City in China. We propose that a landscape ecology pathway is best implemented at regional scale for ecosystem restoration.