The costs and success of revegetation in Australia - questionnaire

The costs and success of revegetation in Australia and the potential for achieving multiple outcomes for biodiversity and carbon.

A PhD project with the Environmental Decisions Group at The University of Queensland and Ecosystem Sciences at CSIRO

» Invitation to participate in a questionnaire

From the researchers:

Background

Investment in revegetation is critical to prevent further loss and decline of biodiversity, reverse environmental damage, sequester atmospheric carbon and provide ecosystem services. We already know that revegetation is characteristically time and resource‐intensive, and often has a low likelihood of success due to ecological, societal and financial factors. There are however few national‐level data on either costs or failure rates. The possibility that desired outcomes will not be realised is seldom considered in planning for revegetation, largely due to a lack of data.

Carbon farming through the national carbon accounting system presents an opportunity to finance revegetation to sequester carbon in vegetation and soils. Depending on the type of  revegetation, carbon farming has the potential to deliver biodiversity and financial benefits alongside carbon abatement. The revegetation type, however, needs to achieve biodiversity benefits and be economically viable under a varying carbon price.

Over recent decades, we have developed and refined decision support tools to prioritise  investments in restoration and assess the economic viability of restoration in carbon farming, but such tools are only as useful as the data on which they rely. Better data on costs and success are needed to improve revegetation outcomes. Accounting for the possibility of failure will likely influence the sites that are prioritised for revegetation, when and how revegetation should occur, and help predict what can be achieved in the long term.