Using historical woodland creation to construct a long-term, large-scale natural experiment: the WrEN project.

ABSTRACT: Natural experiments have been proposed as a way of complementing manipulative experiments to improve ecological understanding and guide management. There is a pressing need for evidence from such studies to inform a shift to landscape-scale conservation, including the design of ecological networks. Although this shift has been widely embraced by conservation communities worldwide, the empirical evidence is limited and equivocal, and may be limiting effective conservation. We present principles for well-designed natural experiments to inform landscape-scale conservation and outline how they are being applied in the WrEN project, which is studying the effects of 160 years of woodland creation on biodiversity in UK landscapes. We describe the study areas and outline the systematic process use

SUBMITTER: Watts K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4863024 | biostudies-literature | 2016 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature