Restoring California’s diverse landscapes can be challenging, but with the right tools and resources, restoration practitioners can make more informed decisions that lead to stronger outcomes. This site is designed to help practitioners of all experience levels, across land types and scales, find clear, science-based guidance for successful restoration. We’ve developed ecosystem-specific restoration guides and compiled key resources to support every stage of the restoration process — from site preparation and species selection to implementation, maintenance, and monitoring. This platform will continue to grow and evolve with restoration needs, new research, and available funding.
Restoration Guides by Ecosystem
Guidelines and resources for restoring California's diverse ecosystems, including grasslands, coastal sage scrub, chaparral, deserts, sagebrush steppe, riparian areas, and oak woodlands.
Restoration Goals
Returning disturbed sites to their original biotic and abiotic features is often not possible or practical; restoration goals, instead, focus on ecosystem processes and the provision of ecosystem services. Knowing your restoration goals will help you develop an effective restoration design and make species choice much easier.
Species Selection
Species selection is an integral component of every active restoration project. Build your planting palette based on a thorough site assessment, including soils, climate, disturbance history, resource availability, and any remnant native vegetation. There are a number of online tools to aid this process.
Preparation and Practices
The selection of plant material and approaches to preparing a site for planting or seeding can significantly affect restoration outcomes. There are several ways that sites can be prepared for plant material installation in order to maximize plant establishment.
Post-restoration Strategies
Ensuring successful restoration outcomes in the longterm often requires ongoing management and maintenance, such as invasive plant control, irrigation, or reinstating important disturbance regimes such as fire or grazing.
Challenges and Solutions
There are many challenges to restoring the diverse terrestrial ecosystems in California. We discuss common barriers to restoration and solutions for overcoming these barriers.