Disturbed Land Restoration

Definitions

Disturbed lands: Areas where the integrity of the natural setting and natural system processes has been directly or indirectly affected by human activities such as resource extraction, visitor use, development or maintenance, or invasion of nonnative species.

Natural system restoration: The long-term process of assisting the recovery of disturbed areas and reintegrating the site into the surrounding natural system so that the area reaches a planned condition and, ultimately, returns to its former unimpaired condition. Restoration involves active management (purposeful manipulations) of the disturbed habitat, such as biological (re-introduction of species), structural (removal of invasive woody or nonnative species), physical (restoration of natural topography), or chemical (mineral waste mitigation). Active management may also include removal of the anthropogenic disturbances that are causing resource degradation or that are preventing natural recovery of a site.

Reclamation: Actions that are oriented toward ecological upgrading of certain processes or functions, such as hydrologic functions or revegetation potential, but that stop short of restoring pre-disturbance natural conditions.

Recovery: The degree to which a disturbance has regained its pre-disturbance ecological form and function (physically and biologically) without human actions such as restoration, reclamation, revegetation, and so on.

Reference conditions/sites: Conditions and processes at naturally functioning sites in the ecological zone that represents the system to be restored. Used as models for restoration design or to measure the success of restoration or reclamation.

Resilience: The natural or internal capacity of components of an ecological system such as plant community or stream morphology to recover.

Restored: The point in the project where disturbed land areas no longer require active management (i.e., the site has reached a planned condition, but not necessarily the former or unimpaired condition). Restored conditions and processes should replicate those of the ecological zone in which the disturbance occurs, including the biological and physical components of the ecosystem, such as the geomorphology, hydrology, soils, biodiversity, and natural process linkages.