Assessing and improving global grassland restoration: Drivers, current effectiveness, and future design

As the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration begins, grassland restoration projects are being scaled up globally. However, a new generation of opportunities and challenges requires a new generation of scientific guidance, particularly for grassland ecosystems that need restoration. Our meta-analysis indicated that grassland restoration significantly enhances biodiversity and ecosystem multifunctionality. However, biodiversity and ecosystem multifunctionality both increased in only half of the restoration observations, indicating that the effectiveness of global grassland restoration needs to be improved. Restoration methods and time were identified as important predictors of the effectiveness of grassland restoration. To address this, we conducted a multi-objective optimization to assess when, where, and how to better implement grassland restoration projects globally. This optimization aimed to provide targeted strategies for different grassland types and regions, considering the varying characteristics and needs of each biome.