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      Impacts of forest restoration on water yield: A systematic review

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          Abstract

          Background

          Enhancing water provision services is a common target in forest restoration projects worldwide due to growing concerns over freshwater scarcity. However, whether or not forest cover expansion or restoration can improve water provision services is still unclear and highly disputed.

          Purpose

          The goal of this review is to provide a balanced and impartial assessment of the impacts of forest restoration and forest cover expansion on water yields as informed by the scientific literature. Potential sources of bias on the results of papers published are also examined.

          Data sources

          English, Spanish and Portuguese peer-review articles in Agricola, CAB Abstracts, ISI Web of Science, JSTOR, Google Scholar, and SciELO. Databases were searched through 2015.

          Search terms

          Intervention terms included forest restoration, regeneration/regrowth, forest second-growth, forestation/afforestation, and forestry. Target terms included water yield/quantity, streamflow, discharge, channel runoff, and annual flow.

          Study selection and eligibility criteria

          Articles were pre-selected based on key words in the title, abstract or text. Eligible articles addressed relevant interventions and targets and included quantitative information.

          Results

          Most studies reported decreases in water yields following the intervention, while other hydrological benefits have been observed. However, relatively few studies focused specifically on forest restoration, especially with native species, and/or on projects done at large spatial or temporal scales. Information is especially limited for the humid tropics and subtropics.

          Conclusions and implications of key findings

          While most studies reported a decrease in water yields, meta-analyses from a sub-set of studies suggest the potential influence of temporal and/or spatial scales on the outcomes of forest cover expansion or restoration projects. Given the many other benefits of forest restoration, improving our understanding of when and why forest restoration can lead to recovery of water yields is crucial to help improve positive outcomes and prevent unintended consequences. Our study identifies the critical types of studies and associated measurements needed.

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          Most cited references58

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          The Natural Flow Regime

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            Landscapes and Riverscapes: The Influence of Land Use on Stream Ecosystems

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              Global land use change, economic globalization, and the looming land scarcity.

              A central challenge for sustainability is how to preserve forest ecosystems and the services that they provide us while enhancing food production. This challenge for developing countries confronts the force of economic globalization, which seeks cropland that is shrinking in availability and triggers deforestation. Four mechanisms-the displacement, rebound, cascade, and remittance effects-that are amplified by economic globalization accelerate land conversion. A few developing countries have managed a land use transition over the recent decades that simultaneously increased their forest cover and agricultural production. These countries have relied on various mixes of agricultural intensification, land use zoning, forest protection, increased reliance on imported food and wood products, the creation of off-farm jobs, foreign capital investments, and remittances. Sound policies and innovations can therefore reconcile forest preservation with food production. Globalization can be harnessed to increase land use efficiency rather than leading to uncontrolled land use expansion. To do so, land systems should be understood and modeled as open systems with large flows of goods, people, and capital that connect local land use with global-scale factors.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Formal analysisRole: Funding acquisitionRole: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: Project administrationRole: SupervisionRole: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Data curationRole: Formal analysisRole: ValidationRole: Visualization
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Data curationRole: MethodologyRole: ValidationRole: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Funding acquisitionRole: Project administrationRole: SupervisionRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                1932-6203
                17 August 2017
                2017
                : 12
                : 8
                : e0183210
                Affiliations
                [1 ] Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Solomons, Maryland, United States of America
                [2 ] National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, University of Maryland, Annapolis, Maryland, United States of America
                [3 ] Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, United States of America
                University of Oregon, UNITED STATES
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Article
                PONE-D-16-41094
                10.1371/journal.pone.0183210
                5560669
                28817639
                f062a4e4-d7d3-4635-9304-eb4e71198ce7
                © 2017 Filoso et al

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 16 October 2016
                : 1 August 2017
                Page count
                Figures: 12, Tables: 3, Pages: 26
                Funding
                Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000001, National Science Foundation;
                Award ID: Z3708015
                Award Recipient :
                Funded by: International Union for Conservation of Nature
                Award Recipient :
                This study was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation ( www.nsf.gov) awarded to the University of Maryland, National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (award # DBI1052875; MAP) and sub-awarded to the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (sub-award # Z3708015; SF). Additional support was provided by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) ( www.iucn.org) for the development and publication of the study. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Research Article
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Ecology
                Ecosystems
                Forests
                Ecology and Environmental Sciences
                Ecology
                Ecosystems
                Forests
                Ecology and Environmental Sciences
                Terrestrial Environments
                Forests
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Ecology
                Forest Ecology
                Ecology and Environmental Sciences
                Ecology
                Forest Ecology
                Ecology and Environmental Sciences
                Natural Resources
                Water Resources
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Agriculture
                Forestry
                Research and Analysis Methods
                Mathematical and Statistical Techniques
                Statistical Methods
                Meta-Analysis
                Physical Sciences
                Mathematics
                Statistics (Mathematics)
                Statistical Methods
                Meta-Analysis
                Earth Sciences
                Hydrology
                Surface Water
                Earth Sciences
                Hydrology
                Flooding
                Research and Analysis Methods
                Database and Informatics Methods
                Database Searching
                Custom metadata
                All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.

                Uncategorized
                Uncategorized

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