Tawanda Tarakini^1,2 , Xingxing Liang¹

1 Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT, Leeds, UK
2 Department of Wildlife and Safari Management, Chinhoyi University of Technology, Bag 7724 Chinhoyi, Zimbabwe
Author    Correspondence author
International Journal of Molecular Ecology and Conservation, 2012, Vol. 2, No. 3   doi: 10.5376/ijmec.2012.02.003
Received: 04 Jun., 2012    Accepted: 10 Jul., 2012    Published: 20 Jul., 2012

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Tarakini and Liang, 2012, The Ecological Processes that Underpin Ecological Restoration, International Journal of Molecular Ecology and Conservation, Vol.2, No.3 (doi: 10.5376/ijmec.2012.02.0003)

The science of restoration ecology is closely linked to ecological knowledge and practical restoration principles are often heavily guided by ecology theory. Knowing that there are sections in community theory that are currently poorly understood, it might be dangerous if restoration principles are based on what science offers for these sections. The need to focus on dispersal, disturbance, colonization and succession dynamics is particularly important since many of our project sites are highly degraded and disjointed from a healthy regional pool of colonists. In this article, the importance of these major ecological theories and how relevant they are in restorations today are evaluated. Restoration work is set to bring not only corrections in functionality and community structure of degraded systems but also benefiting basic research in community ecology.

Colonisation; Dispersal; Disturbance; Ecological restoration; Succession