Rapid ecosystem and land-use change, increased ecological extremes, and human disturbance on the Colorado Plateau in the southwest US are creating new, significant challenges for land managers, policymakers, and local and Tribal communities. These conditions highlight a need for intensified research efforts that inform restoration in order to outpace the rate of change. 

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The rapid intensification of ecological extremes in response to extended drought and human land use is perhaps nowhere more apparent than in drylands, including the semiarid region of the Colorado Plateau. 

USGS and Utah State University researchers highlight research directions to aid in the restoration of Colorado Plateau ecosystems during the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030) that:

1. Address high levels of ecosystem heterogeneity (variable soil and geomorphic properties and land use histories among patchworks of vegetation communities);
2. Explore simultaneous global change drivers;
3. Are co-produced with a broad range of partners and,
4. Center Indigenous ways of knowing.

The researchers provide examples of restoration research efforts led by early career researchers grappling with informing management actions in a region where new ecological extremes are the result of historic grazing, continued land-use pressures, and a rapidly changing climate.

Read the paper: Restoration research actions to address rapid change in drylands—Insights from the Colorado Plateau: Restoration Ecology, https://doi.org/10.1111/rec.13855

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