Effects of restoration on tree communities and carbon storage in rainforest fragments of the Western Ghats, India

Ecological restoration is a leading strategy for reversing biodiversity losses and enhancing terrestrial carbon sequestration in degraded tropical forests. There have been few comprehensive assessments of recovery following restoration in fragmented forest landscapes, and the efficacy of active versus passive (i.e., natural regeneration) restoration remains unclear. We examined 11 indicators of forest structure, tree diversity and composition (adult and sapling), and aboveground carbon storage in 25 pairs of actively restored (AR; 7–15 yr after weed removal and mixed-native tree species planting) and naturally regenerating (NR) plots within degraded rainforest fragments, and in 17 less-disturbed benchmark (BM) rainforest plots in the Western Ghats, India. We assessed the effects of active restoration on the 11 indicators and tested the hypothesis that active restoration effects increase with isolation from contiguous and relatively intact rainforests. Active restoration significantly in...