Reforms are urgently needed to break through the bottleneck challenges during plantation restoration

Climate change mitigation strategies that are based on nature include artificial forests, which are being utilized in greater numbers globally to restore environmental degradation and devastation caused by human activities. However, a substantial expansion in the amount of plantation forests does not guarantee the successful restoration of ecological function. In this study, we investigated the plantation forest restoration success by conducting field monitoring and analyzing the function of monoculture plantations and natural secondary forests. Our research revealed that although certain forests have successfully restored their ecological function as anticipated, there is a disparity between the plantation forests and the natural forests. The present restoration of plantation forests is facing a bottleneck challenge, where previously built forests are inefficient and are facing degradation without a successor to take up the “next baton”. Upon optimizing the configuration of stand factors and terrain factors, we discovered that the ecological function of plantation forests can be substantially enhanced. We suggest that the close-to-nature management is urgently needed to promote the transformation of monoculture plantations into near-natural forests.