Abstract:
Effectiveness evaluation of ecological restoration, as a critical component in ecological restoration research, serves as an important tool for further adjusting and optimizing ecological restoration programs. This study collected the papers published over 30 years on ecological restoration in urban coastal wetlands, and systematically analyzed the characteristics of urban coastal wetlands, ecological restoration of urban coastal wetlands, restoration targets and research themes, progress in indicators and methods related to the effectiveness evaluation of restoration, important case studies, and limitations. Results indicate that the research and practice on ecological restoration of urban coastal wetlands began relatively late, with the first relevant literature appearing only in 1995, but develop rapidly after 2015. The ecological restoration targets of urban coastal wetlands mainly focus on 4 aspects: elimination of disturbing factors, biodiversity restoration, enhancement of ecosystem services, and advancement of sustainable development goals. The themes of effectiveness evaluation of ecological restoration in urban wetlands mainly includes 5 aspects, including evaluation of environmental factors, biological factors, ecological process and functions, ecosystem services and social factors. Trends in the effectiveness evaluation methodologies of ecological restoration of urban coastal wetlands can also be summarized into 3 items of development,
i.e. adoption of multiple-indicator comprehensive evaluation, emphasis on spatially explicit evaluations, and sustainable development evaluation. At present, the research on the effectiveness of ecological restoration of urban coastal wetlands is still in the emerging stage, and the existing research cases mainly focus on the research of ecological processes and functions such as environmental and biological characteristics and biogeochemical cycles, but lack ecosystem service-related indicators and comprehensive evaluation research. It is suggested that in the future, research and exploration on the assessment of ecological restoration effectiveness of urban coastal wetlands can be strengthened from the aspects of ecosystem services, the relationship between ecological characteristics/structure, process/function, and service, and the rate of ecosystem recovery.