Abstract Objective The aim of this study was to evaluate the 2-year clinical performance of class II restorations made with a composite resin with two different viscosities. Methods 47 patients ...received two class II restorations ( n = 94), one made with GrandioSO (conventional viscosity – CV), and the other with GrandioSO Heavy Flow (flowable viscosity – FV), subjecting both materials to the same clinical conditions. The self-etching adhesive Futurabond M was used for all restorations. The composites were inserted using the incremental technique. The restorations were evaluated using the modified USPHS criteria according to the periods: baseline, 6 months, 1 year and 2 years after restorative procedures. Results After 24 months, 40 patients attended the recall and 78 restorations were evaluated. In all periods, no secondary caries was observed. After 6 months, there were slightly overall changes of scores for most parameters. After 24 months, the higher number of changes from score Alfa to Bravo was observed for marginal discolouration (32.5% – CV and 39.5% – FV) and colour match (15% – CV and 31.6% – FV), followed by proximal contact (25% – CV and 23.7% – FV) and marginal adaptation (20% – CV and 21.1% – FV). For wear, surface texture and postoperative sensitivity the changes were very small. Just two restorations were lost during the 24-month follow up. Less than 5% of all restorations showed postoperative sensitivity. Chi-square test showed no significant differences between the two materials for all parameters analysed. Conclusion After 2 years of clinical service, no significant differences were observed between GrandioSO conventional and GrandioSO Heavy Flow for the parameters analysed. Both materials provided acceptable clinical behaviour in class II restorations. Clinical Significance This study presents the possibility of using a flowable composite with high filler content, for performing class II restorations.
The restoration of deforested or degraded areas can contribute to biodiversity conservation and global resilience given the current and projected impacts of climate change. In recent years, a robust ...array of ecological restoration frameworks have been generated to address restoration challenges at large scales in different ecosystems around the world. Unfortunately, the costs associated with restoration at such scales greatly challenges the implementation of such frameworks. We used landscape ecology principles with multicriteria optimization of landscape resilience and agricultural productivity as a way to mitigate the trade-offs between production and restoration. We used the Cerrado biome in Mato Grosso do Sul State, Brazil, as a case study to apply our framework. We compared three scenarios: minimal legal compliance (MLC); selection by ecological resilience (SER); and selection by restoration cost (SRC). Our results show that increasing the restoration target from MLC (25%) to SER (30%) means moving from 968,316 to 1592 million hectares, which can represent a huge opportunity cost for agricultural lands. However, because costs and resilience are not homogeneously distributed throughout landscapes, we can select areas of intermediate ecological resilience and low cost, for the same restoration area target. This process can reduce potential conflicts and make restoration a more viable process. Our results also reveal some areas that can be particularly important for reconciling agriculture and landscape restoration. Those areas combined high and intermediate resilience and an above average profitability. This could mean that increasing restoration in this area could be very expensive, assuming that our proxy roughly represents the restoration implementation cost. However, there is another important message here, that some areas can be productive at the same time that they maintain levels of resilience above the legal compliance, which facilitates win-win scenarios in human-dominated landscapes.
Ecological restoration has become an important strategy to conserve biodiversity and ecosystems services. To restore 15% of degraded ecosystems as stipulated by the Convention on Biological Diversity ...Aichi target 15, we developed a prioritization framework to identify potential priority sitesfor restoration in Mexico, a megadiverse country. We used the most current biological and environmental data on Mexico to assess areas of biological importance and restoration feasibility at national scale and engaged stakeholders and experts throughout the process. We integrated 8 criteria into 2 components (i.e., biological importance and restoration feasibility) in a spatial multicriteria analysis and generated 11 scenarios to test the effect of assigning different component weights. The priority restoration sites were distributed across all terrestrial ecosystems of Mexico; 64.1% were in degraded natural vegetation and 6% were in protected areas. Our results provide a spatial guide to where restoration could enhance the persistence of species of conservation concern and vulnerable ecosystems while maximizing the likelihood of restoration success. Such spatial prioritization is a first step in informing policy makers and restoration planners where to focus local and large-scale restoration efforts, which should additionally incorporate social and monetary cost-benefit considerations. La restauración ecológica se ha convertido en una estrategia importante para conservar la biodiversidad y los servicios ambientales. Para restaurar el 15% de los ecosistemas degradados, como se estipuló en la Meta 15 de las Metas de Aichi de la Convención sobre la Diversidad Biológica, desarrollamos un marco conceptual para identificar los potenciales sitios prioritarios a restaurar en México, un país megadiverso. Utilizamos los datos biológicos y ambientales más actuales sobre México para valorarlas áreas de importancia biológica y la viabilidad de la restauración a una escala nacional, involucrando a actores y expertos a lo largo del proceso. Integramos ocho criterios dentro de dos componentes (es decir, importancia biológica y viabilidad de la restauración) en un modelo espacial multicriterio y generamos once escenarios para probar el efecto de adjudicar diferentes valores a los componentes. Los sitios prioritarios de restauración se distribuyeron en todos los ecosistemas terrestres de México; 64.1% en vegetación natural degradada y 6% dentro de áreas protegidas. Nuestros resultados proporcionan una guía espacial que indica donde la restauración podría mejorar la persistencia de las especies de importancia para la conservación y de los ecosistemas vulnerables a la vez que maximiza la probabilidad del éxito de restauración. Tal priorización espacial es un primer paso para informar a quienes hacen las políticas y a los planificadores de la restauración sobre en dónde enfocar los esfuerzos de restauración locales y a gran escala, lo cual también debería incorporar consideraciones sociales y de costo-beneficio monetario.
Combining natural capital accounting tools and ecosystem restoration approaches builds on existing frameworks to track changes in ecosystem stocks and flows of services and benefits as a result of ...restoration. This approach highlights policy‐relevant benefits that arise due to restoration efforts and helps to maximize opportunities for return on investment. Aligning the System of Environmental Economic Accounting–Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA) framework with risk assessment tools, we developed a risk register for peatlands in two contrasting catchments in Ireland, based on available information relating to peatland stocks (extent and condition) and flows (services and benefits), as well as knowledge of pressures. This approach allowed for identification of areas to target peatland restoration, by highlighting the potential to reduce and reverse negative trends in relation to provisioning, regulating, and cultural services, flows relating to non‐use values, as well as abiotic flows. We also highlighted ways to reduce and reverse the effects of historical and ongoing pressures through restoration measures, aligning our approach with that outlined in the SER International Principles and Standards for the Practice of Ecological Restoration. Building on the synergies between the SEEA EA and the SER Standards is highlighted as a means to develop transdisciplinary collaboration, to assist in setting and achieving targets set out under the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration as well as integrating regional policy targets set under the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, and the related EU Habitats and EU Water Framework Directives.
Global change in its various expressions has impacted the structure and function of ecosystems worldwide, compromising the provision of fundamental ecosystem services and creating a predicament for ...the societies that benefit from them. Restoration ecology plays a key role in securing ecological integrity and societal well‐being, and hence represents a global priority. However, human perception seldom goes back to the beginning of significant ecosystem degradation, making ecosystem assessment and restoration practices difficult. Long‐term data, historical records, and paleoecological information can increase our understanding of ecological responses to natural or anthropogenic impacts and can directly contribute to the understanding and design of effective restoration practices. Here, examples from different ecosystems (drylands, grasslands, shrublands, savannas, forests, coastal environments, and wetlands) brought together from around the world illustrate (1) how to develop appropriate restoration references under the current uncertain global change scenario; (2) how long‐term perspectives on drivers of change can help to identify critical ecological elements, thus contributing to defining restoration goals; and (3) how to incorporate information from the past as guidance for present interventions and landscape management. The building of community and the specificity of paleoecological and historical records of ecological change over time will be key in facilitating the translation of long‐term information into the living process of ecological restoration practice.
Legacies are persistent changes in natural systems resulting from human activities. Legacies that affect river ecosystems can result from human alterations outside of the river corridor, such as ...timber harvest or urbanization, or from alterations within the river corridor, including flow regulation, river engineering, and removal of large wood and beaver dams. Human alterations of river ecosystems have been occurring for thousands of years in some parts of the world and are now ubiquitous, yet both river scientists and the public may be unaware of the persistent effects of historical activities. Failure to recognize the legacy of historical activities that no longer occur can skew perceptions of river process and form and the natural range of variability in river ecosystems. Examples come from rivers of the Mid‐Atlantic Piedmont and the Pacific Northwest regions of the United States. Mid‐Atlantic Piedmont streams in which legacy sediment accumulated behind now‐abandoned mill dams experienced a complete transformation from wide, shallow, marshy valleys to sinuous rivers lined with tall cutbanks, but the existence and the cause of this river metamorphosis was not widely recognized until the first decade of the 21st century. Rivers of the Pacific Northwest from which large wood was removed have changed during the past century from spatially heterogeneous, multichannel systems closely connected to their floodplains via frequent channel avulsion and lateral migration to single‐thread channels with more homogeneous floodplains and less lateral connectivity. Again, this river metamorphosis has only been recognized within the past two decades. In each of these regional examples, river process and form have changed so substantially that the river ecosystems can be described as having assumed an alternative state. In these and many other examples, the alternative state provides lower levels of ecosystem services such as habitat, biodiversity, and attenuation of downstream fluxes of water, sediment, organic carbon, and nutrients. River management designed to enhance and restore these ecosystem services can be more effective if the continuing effects of these historical legacies are recognized. The grand scientific challenges resulting from historical human alterations of river ecosystems include the following: (1) to recognize the existence of a legacy that continues to affect river ecosystem process and form; (2) to understand the source of the legacy with respect to chronology, type, spatial extent, and intensity of human activities; (3) to understand the implications of the legacy regarding how river process and form and river ecosystem services have changed; and (4) to design management or restoration strategies that can mitigate the loss of river ecosystem services. In summary, the existence of forgotten legacies challenges river scientists to recognize the continuing effects of human activities that have long since ceased and also poses challenges for the application of scientific understanding to resource management. Societal expectations for attractive, simple, stable rivers are commonly at odds with scientific understanding of rivers as dynamic, spatially heterogeneous, nonlinear ecosystems. Knowledge of how human actions, including historical actions that have long since ceased, continue to alter river ecosystems can help to bridge the gap between societal and scientific perceptions of rivers.
Key Points
Historical human activities have altered river ecosystems in ways no longer visible
Failure to recognize these alterations skews perception of river form and process
Effective river management and restoration requires close attention to historical legacies
The Native Oyster Restoration Alliance (NORA) supports the protection and ecological restoration of the native European oyster, Ostrea edulis, and its habitat across its current and historical ...biogeographical range. NORA works to overcome barriers to the conservation, restoration, and recovery of the European oyster by providing a platform for the NORA community to collaborate and participate in knowledge exchange. NORA seeks to support responsible restoration practice, in compliance with biosecurity and sustainability.
Against this background, the NORA community formulated a series of specific recommendations, the Berlin Oyster Recommendation, to support native oyster restoration by developing and applying best practice with the aim to recover healthy and resilient marine ecosystems. In combination with the Standards for Ecological Restoration (SER) and the Restoration Guidelines for Shellfish Reefs, the Berlin Oyster Recommendation is a relevant tool for successful and sustainable oyster restoration in Europe.
The establishment of NORA working groups will support the implementation and further development of the six corresponding recommendations. Current NORA working groups cover site selection, biosecurity, production, and monitoring. The site selection working group will address the identification of suitable sites for oyster restoration to support policy relevant decision making and the conservation, reinforcement, or reintroduction of native oysters. The biosecurity working group will develop biosecurity guidelines for native oyster restoration in Europe. The production working group will assess the potential of standards for seed oyster production and supply in order to enhance production appropriate for restoration purposes. In close collaboration with the Native Oyster Network – UK & Ireland (NON), the monitoring working group will produce a monitoring guidelines handbook to provide metrics and methods that will be suitable across the range of O. edulis projects in Europe for the documentation of restoration success and ecosystem recovery.
The Berlin Oyster Recommendation was examined and interpreted by NORA experts in the context of the further development of joint guidelines for the practice of successful and sustainable native oyster restoration.
Arid forests in the American West contend with overly dense stands and a need to reduce fuels and restore more natural fire regimes. Forest restoration efforts include fuel treatments, such as ...thinning and prescribed burning, that can reduce ground and ladder fuels. Restoration and fuel treatments have emerged as leading wildfire risk-reduction strategies in the American West, yet little is known about the cost-effectiveness of such programs. To evaluate forest restoration and fuel treatment benefits and costs, we conducted a meta-analysis of benefit-cost ratios for restoration benefit types documented in the literature for Western U.S. dry mixed conifer forests at risk of uncharacteristic wildfires. A total of 120 observations were collated from 16 studies conducted over the last two decades, with benefits ranging from enhanced ecosystem services to extensively avoided wildfire costs. Significant variation in the value of restoration and fuel treatment benefit types was found, indicating that restoration benefits differ in value based on societal importance. Overall, 17 individual benefit types were aggregated to show that in the most valuable and at-risk watersheds, every dollar invested in forest restoration can provide up to seven dollars of return in the form of benefits and provide a return-on-investment of 600%.
In 1998, a 6.1-ha wetland restoration project along the Rock River, IL, USA was designed to test five afforestation methods on former agricultural land, including planting bareroot trees, ...balled-and-burlapped trees, seedlings, acorns, or allowing natural regeneration. Fifteen years later, we assessed vegetation at the site to determine the effectiveness of alternative strategies and compare treatments to an adjacent floodplain forest. We also compared the cost of treatments to determine whether long-term restoration outcomes justified initial costs. After 15 years, lower cost treatments (acorn plantings and passive restoration) were dominated by dense reed canarygrass (
Phalaris arundinacea
) with sparse trees, whereas higher cost treatments (bareroot and balled-and-burlapped tree plantings) had developed closed tree canopies, and tended to have greater plant species richness, tree basal area, and density of stems >7.5-cm diameter. For every additional $10,000 per ha spent on restoration, predicted richness increased by 1 species per 250-m
2
plot, predicted
P. arundinacea
biomass decreased by 61 g m
−2
, and predicted tree basal area increased by 3 m
2
ha
−1
. Although some studies have indicated that passive regeneration alone is effective for afforestation, restoration of floodplains in the presence of
P. arundinacea
will require a more intensive approach.
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