UC Santa Cruz

The selection of ecological indicators is an important step toward more effective restoration monitoring. The debate between Reid (2015) and Durigan and Suganuma (2015) regarding the usefulness of species composition for monitoring restoration trajectory is timely and salient, but it lacks a middle way proposal to balance ecological relevance and practical viability. We propose a way forward to resolving this debate, namely using easily measurable functional traits, a type of compositional measure, as an indicator. Assessing functional composition trajectory may help overcome some limitations with taxonomic identification and provide more meaningful outcomes to evaluate restoration success.