@article{jaunatre_new_2013,
Author = {Jaunatre, Renaud and Buisson, Elise and Muller,
Isabelle and Morlon, H\'el\`ene and Meslard,
Fran\c{c}ois and Dutoit, Thierry},
Title = {New synthetic indicators to assess community
resilience and restoration success},
Journal = {Ecological Indicators},
Volume = {29},
Pages = {468--477},
abstract = {The Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 sets as
an objective the restoration of 15\% of degraded
ecosystems by 2020. This challenge raises at least two
major questions: (i) How to restore and (ii) how to
measure restoration success of said ecosystems?
Measurement of restoration success is necessary to
assess objective achievement and to adjust management
with regard to objectives. Numerous studies are being
conducted to try to work out synthetic indices to
assess ecosystem diversity or integrity in the context
of global change. Nevertheless, at the community level,
there is no index that allows the assessment of
community integrity regarding its restoration or
resilience, despite the fact that a lot of indicators
are used such as species richness, Shannon diversity,
multivariate analyses or similarity indices. We have
therefore developed two new indices giving new insights
on community states: the first index, coined as the
Community Structure Integrity Index, measures the
proportion of the species abundance in the reference
community represented in the restored or degraded
community, and the second index, coined as the Higher
Abundance Index, measures the proportion of the species
abundance in the restored or degraded community which
is higher than in the reference community. We
illustrate and discuss the use of these new indices
with three examples: (i) fictitious communities, (ii) a
recent restoration (2 years) of a Mediterranean
temporary wetland (Camargue in France) in order to
assess restoration efficiency, and (iii) a recently
disturbed pseudo-steppe plant community (La Crau area
in France) in order to assess natural resilience of the
plant community. The indices provide summarized
information on the success of restoration or on the
resilience of the plant community, which both appear
less positive than with standard indicators already
used. The indices also provide additional insights
useful for management purposes: the Community Structure
Integrity Index can indicate whether the improving
target species abundance is needed or not while the
Higher Abundance Index can indicate whether controlling
the high abundance of some species is needed in order
to approach a reference ecosystem. These relatively
simple indices developed on community composition and
structure state can provide a base to further indices
focusing on ecosystem functioning or services not only
calculating values as a static point but also its
temporal or spatial dynamic.},
doi = {10.1016/j.ecolind.2013.01.023},
year = 2013
}