Special Issue Editor:

Guest Editor
Dr. Susan Cordell
USDA, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station, Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry, 60 Nowelo Street, Hilo, HI 96720, Hawaii, USA
Website: http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/programs/cb/staff/scordell/ E-Mail: scordell01@fs.fed.us
Interests: ecophysiology; restoration ecology; functional ecology; tropical dry ecosystems; grass invasions; hawaiian ecosystems

Special Issue Information:

Dear Colleagues,

Restoration Ecology is a relatively new field where concepts such as sustainability are mostly theoretically posed rather than quantitatively based. Traditional restoration science has been guided by successional theory towards a historic reference system. However, restoration practice must adapt new strategies as many systems appear resilient to traditional restoration approaches. This special issue of Sustainability addresses this question: How do we move forward rather than backward towards ecosystem restoration for sustainability in today’s anthropogenically-influenced systems? Recent work in restoration practice confirms that a major conceptual restoration flaw is the assumption that terrestrial systems are orderly and static rather than dynamic. Hence current restoration success criteria perhaps are not in fact realistic or sustainable. Furthermore, how do we incorporate future disturbance regimes into criterion for sustainability—be they natural or anthropogenic, small scale or large scale? This special issue will publish papers that address questions such as how do we define, promote, and evaluate science, practice, and policy-based sustainability success criteria into the field of restoration ecology? It is a goal of this special issue to publish papers that span restoration sustainability objectives that may range from mandated restoration (i.e., endangered species recovery), to reversing biodiversity loss, to the recovery of ecosystem function. In addition, this special issue aims to publish papers investigating these questions across trophic levels, geographic origins, disturbance regimes, and/or conflicting multi-use perspectives. Papers that evaluate progress and explore novel approaches towards the sustainability of restoration theory or practice are encouraged.

Dr. Susan Cordell
Guest Editor

Submission

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. Papers will be published continuously (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are refereed through a peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed Open Access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 500 CHF (Swiss Francs) and will increase to 800 CHF in July. English correction and/or formatting fees of 250 CHF (Swiss Francs) will be charged in certain cases for those articles accepted for publication that require extensive additional formatting and/or English corrections.

Keywords:

ecosystem sustainability
success criteria
novel approaches
traditional restoration
disturbance regimes