BETHLEHEM, Pa. — When it comes to restoring natural landscapes across the globe, there are several ongoing debates, Daniel C. Laughlin said Tuesday.
Chief among them, though, is a question: How can we restore landscapes to what they once were as the climate continues to change, creating different conditions?
“This is an ongoing debate, and it's an interesting one, because we need to come to terms with the fact that things are changing, and we can't restore things back to some fixed point in time,” said Laughlin, a botany professor at the University of Wyoming.
“We need to restore resilient communities and ecosystems.”
Laughlin was the keynote speaker during the Lehigh Valley Watershed Conference at Ben Franklin Technology Partners’ TechVentures building, 116 Research Drive, on Lehigh University's Mountaintop campus.
In its 10th year, and led by the Watershed Coalition of the Lehigh Valley, the conference theme was “Back to Basics,” and drew a sold-out crowd, with approximately 180 people, including professionals and volunteers, attending.
“There's nothing like it anywhere, where it is this mix of engineering and technical and conservation professionals, along with conservation volunteers. We're really trying to connect these people with one another.”Rebecca Hayden, president, Watershed Coalition of the Lehigh Valley
“It's a great conference,” said Rebecca Hayden, WCLV president.
“There's nothing like it anywhere, where it is this mix of engineering and technical and conservation professionals, along with conservation volunteers. We're really trying to connect these people with one another.”
‘We can't just protect what's left’
Laughlin’s plenary session included talking through the current state of restoration ecology on a global level.
The world is halfway through the United Nations’ Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, an effort to protect and revive ecosystems to benefit both people and the environment.
“The reason this was established was because we realized that preservation is not enough in order to achieve our goals of climate mitigation,” Laughlin said.
“We can't just protect what's left. We need global-scale efforts of restoration in order to scale up and achieve our goals of, say, carbon sequestration and climate mitigation.”
Along with the initiative has come several mass efforts to plant trees, he said, like the trillion trees movement.
However, some of these efforts can end up planting trees where they don’t belong, like in grassy biomes, such as prairies, meadows and savannahs.
“Another problem that we're seeing is that there's massive tree-planting failures,” he said.
“One study estimated that 44% of the trees that were planted died in the tropical forest in which they were being planted. Others showed that 98% of the mangroves that were planted died.
“And so, clearly, restoration success should not be measured by acres planted, but tree survival.”
Asked about the proliferation of invasive species in the Valley, Laughlin described invasives “are a major issue” that are “not going away.”
“Some people are starting to argue that we need to relax a little bit and acknowledge that we're never going to totally eradicate,” he said.
“But, the goal is to try to create a resilient ecosystem where the invasive species are part of the community, and not just totally overtaking.”
‘Agricultural literacy’
After the opening session, participants could choose from four tracks: Back to Basics, Volunteer, Farm Conservation and Technical, each with four sessions.
During “Digging into Farm Conservation,” officials explained how farmers across Pennsylvania are supported through training, funding and partnerships.
Brad Kunsman, Penn State Extension educator, spoke about the Agricultural Conservation Assistance Program. The state-run program, administered at the county level, provides financial and technical assistance to farmers for conservation projects that reduce sediment and nutrient runoff.
“At Penn State, we were fortunate enough to bid for the contract, and we got the contract to run the Center for Ag Conservation Assistance training,” he said.
“We are the education and research leg of the ACAP program. We are offering all the trainings around the state. We're offering continuing education. We're helping with technical assistance in the counties.”
In Northampton County, the ACP program is run through the county’s farmland preservation office. Lehigh County’s in run through the Lehigh County Conservation District.
“Our major subject areas when it comes to training is agricultural literacy, and that is both public facing, but it's also farmer facing,” he said. “Because we have a lot of new and beginning farmers that, as they dive in — they might be inheriting a farm, they might have some resource concerns on it. They might want to change practices from how the family always did it.
“So, teaching folks about the new practices, the new ways to manage resource concerns.”
It was the first time the conference was held at Ben Franklin Technology Partners, even though Lehigh has hosted the conference for several years.
“When I talk about the conference, the attendees at this conference are more or less an even split between engineering professionals, conservation professionals and conservation volunteers,” Hayden said.
“There's a lot of agency people here, too – state, local and some federal agencies. And that has always been the case, and that is our intended audience. It always has been. It's a very, very unique audience.”
For more information, go to the WCLV’s website.
