Five ways seascape ecology can help to achieve marine restoration goals

Marine restoration is increasingly recognized as a key activity to regenerate ecosystem integrity, safeguard biodiversity, and enable ocean sustainability. Global policies such as the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework include area-based targets to improve ecosystem integrity and connectivity. Achieving these targets requires scaling up restoration in ecologically and socially meaningful ways.

The objective was to establish a consistent language and framework for seascape restoration practitioners that complements existing marine restoration guidelines and can help to achieve cross-scale restoration targets.

We proposed that the integration of the 5Cs of seascape ecology-Context, Configuration, Connectivity, Consideration of scale, and Culture- can offer a valuable framework for advancing marine restoration practice and policy. We synthesized existing ecological and social science evidence to demonstrate how the 5Cs framework can be applied to seascape restoration efforts.

We established a consistent language and framework for marine restoration practitioners and recommended four key operational pathways: (1) focusing on the recovery of interconnected habitats across the land-sea interface; (2) integrating the 5Cs from site selection through to monitoring; (3) representing social, historical, cultural, and ecological variables when assessing site suitability; and (4) fostering transdisciplinary collaborations to support integrative, multifaceted projects.

Integrating landscape ecology concepts and methods into coastal restoration will enable the effective scaling up of regenerative actions. Applying the 5Cs can help achieve global restoration targets through more strategic, inclusive, and effective marine restoration across coastal seascapes.