The Global Restore Project: A collaborative scientist-practitioner synthesis initiative with an open-science vision

Emma Ladouceur, The German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), Leipzig, Germany, Nancy Shackelford, nstitute of Arctic and Alpine Research, Colorado University, Boulder, CO, W. Stanley Harpole, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research, Lars Brudvig, Plant Biology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, Holly P. Jones, Department of Biological Sciences and Institute for the Study of the Environment, Sustainability, and Energy, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL and Jonathan M. Chase, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Germany

Background/Question/Methods
The Global Restore Project (GRP) aims to bring together restoration researchers globally to pool existing data and knowledge for a deeper understanding of restoration science. Since our launch in 2019, we have partnered with the Global Arid Zone Project (GAZP), to bring together restoration data across global aridity gradients. We are collecting vegetation community monitoring data from actively restored (where seeding or planting treatments have been applied), passively restored (natural succession after disturbance) and undisturbed remnant reference habitats for a rich, flexible, comparative framework to assess success. We are bringing together fragmented datasets collected over time by different teams, connecting remnant monitoring with regional restoration and are developing tools for practitioners to be able to use. Identifying spatial and temporal patterns of restoration success and failure has the power to inform predictive restoration science, to improve outcomes and reduce risk in restoration projects, and inform practical applications and policy. We will make these data completely open access and available to the community wherever possible, and intend to continue to grow these resources and tools we are developing over time.
Results/Conclusions
Here, we give an update on progress made, on our current status. We present some preliminary results from North American grassland communities and metacommunities; elucidating scale-dependent patterns of recovery in restoration that could help to inform targeted, efficient approaches to restoration treatments and management. There is immense potential for synthesis in ecological restoration to also contribute to broad efforts across other subfields of ecology to develop capacity in open data resources. This presents collaborative opportunities for restoration to benefit from tools and expertise from other subfields, while contributing to these broad efforts, and in turn, for restoration to benefit from these efforts. We invite every practitioner and scientist to join us by contributing data, ideas, analyses and insights to directly inform actions and improve outcomes for the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.