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Special Issue on Biodiversity Conservation and Ecological Restoration of Vulnerable Ecosystems in the Anthropocene
Annoucements
In the Anthropocene, due to the interactive impact of high-intensity human activities and climate change, many unique, valuable, but vulnerable ecosystems on Earth (e.g., salt marshes, ponds, grasslands, mangroves, seagrass and lakes) have suffered severe degradation, showing a considerable loss of habitat areas, biodiversity and ecosystem services. To this end, in the United Nations (UN) Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and the coming decades under unprecedented global changes, the world is increasingly committed to preventing, halting and reversing the degradation of fragile ecosystems, conserving biodiversity, and regenerating ecosystem services for both nature and humanity. For example, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework aimed to ensure at least 30% of degraded ecosystems are effectively restored by 2030. The 2025-2030 Global Strategic Framework for Wetland Conservation adopted by the 14th Meeting of the Conference of the Contracting Parties to the Ramsar Conservation on Wetlands (COP 14) encourages priority restoration of vulnerable ecosystems such as mangroves and small wetlands.
While restoring these vulnerable ecosystems is a global imperative, many unexpected challenges remain for ecological restoration, such as a lack of mature restoration techniques, improper implementation, and the absence of adaptive management. Such hidden problems could significantly undermine the restoration performance, with many restoration projects underperforming compared to natural ecosystems even after decades of recovery. Therefore, how to effectively restore and sustainably manage vulnerable ecosystems to adapt to future threats of global environmental changes has been a primary concern among, e.g., ecologists, conservation biologists, ecological engineers, ecological managers and policy-makers. Understanding how anthropogenic disturbance and climate change lead to the degradation of vulnerable ecosystems and how to effectively restore them in order to facilitate their structural and functional recovery, is not only an emerging frontier in the field of restoration ecology, but also urgently required for achieving the UN sustainable development goals and fulfilling the ambitious restoration commitments.
Aims and topics
The main objective of this special issue is to advance existing knowledge on how to effectively restore and manage vulnerable ecosystems through multidisciplinary and advanced approaches. We are interested in original manuscripts that cover the relevant following topics, including but not limited to spatio-temporal pattern evolution, degradation mechanisms, restoration techniques, and management frameworks.
- Degradation mechanisms and processes of typically vulnerable ecosystems in the face of intensifying disturbances, such as reclamation, drought, biological invasion, etc.
- Monitoring, modelling and assessing the characteristics and evolution vulnerable ecosystems under local or global environmental changes.
- Remote sensing capabilities (coupled with ecosystem models) that account for land-use change, NPP, surface attributes of climatic conditions, soil, and vegetation.
- Ecological effects of altered hydrological or biological connectivity of vulnerable ecosystems under the increasing human activities and climate change.
- Theoretical frameworks, advanced techniques, empirical studies and adaptive management measures for degraded ecosystem restoration and biodiversity conservation.
Guest Editors
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Zhonghua Ning
School of Environment
Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
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Xinxin Wang
School of Life Science
Fudan University, Shanghai, China
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Tian Xie
School of Environment
Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
- Zhenchang Zhu
School of Ecology, Environment and Resources
Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China
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Christopher B. Craft
School of Public and Environmental Affairs
Indiana University, Bloomington, USA
Submission
All papers must conform to the JPE’s submission guidelines, which can be found at: https://academic.oup.com/jpe/pages/General_Instructions
All papers must be submitted via the submission system, which can be found at: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jpe
NOTE: Please kindly select the special issue "Biodiversity Conservation and Ecological Restoration of Vulnerable Ecosystems in the Anthropocene" during the submission process and make a mention of it in the cover letter.
Schedule
Deadline for Manuscript Submission: July 31, 2024
Deadline for Manuscript Reviews: September 30, 2024
Deadline of Revised Submission: October 31, 2024
Expected Release: November 30, 2024
Contact
Journal Homepage:
https://academic.oup.com/jpe
https://www.jpe.ac.cn/
E-mail: jpe@ibcas.ac.cn
5-year IF: 2.6
Yuanhe Yang
Bernhard Schmid
ISSN 1752-9921(print)
ISSN 1752-993X(online)
