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The Franklin Institute named INSTAAR Faculty Fellow Katharine Suding the recipient of the Bower Award and Prize for achievement in Science today, citing her “transformative contributions to restoration ecology.”

Katharine Suding

Each year, the Bower Awards go to outstanding scientists and innovators who have led paradigm shifts in their respective fields. Past winners include Jane Goodall, Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein and Marie Curie.��

“These are some of the greatest minds and most influential pioneers of our time,” Franklin Institute President and CEO Larry Dubinski wrote in a press release.

Suding has pioneered theoretical shifts, experimental methods and collaborative efforts with land managers since she entered the field of restoration ecology more than 25 years ago. Her work has influenced ecologists around the world. Suding’s 2004 paper “,” remains the most highly-cited article in the field to this day.

Though her theoretical contributions to the field have had a global impact, much of Suding’s work is locally-focused. At INSTAAR,�� from 2013-2023. It is an ongoing National Science Foundation-funded project that has produced insights into alpine ecology for more than 40 years. She also recently�� that applies insights from grassland ecology research toward mitigating wildfire risk.

On May 1,�� for a ceremony at the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial in Philadelphia. INSTAAR sat down with the eminent restoration ecologist for a Q&A on the eve of the big announcement.

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What was your path to restoration ecology?

I grew up in Evergreen, Colorado, and I was always really interested in the natural world. I especially loved the open spaces that we have around here and, later in my career, I think that’s why I always sought out grasslands.

Anyways, because of my interests, it made sense to pursue biology and ecology during my undergrad at Williams. When I got to graduate school, I was really interested in theory and quantitative approaches, but I also wanted to be able to work with land managers and provide something useful. That’s when I started to get interested in restoration.

Suding stands under a favorite apple tree near the Dunn House, Boulder Open Space. Credit: Matt Talarico, Impact Media Lab.

At the time, it was a pretty new field — it really started in the late 80s and early 90s. One of the premises back then was that if you know how a system works and how all the pieces of the web of life fit together, then you should know how to put those pieces back into a degraded system and restore it. An often-repeated quote from the 80s was that "land restoration is the acid test of our ecological understanding.”

It was pretty appealing to be able to take ideas from the basic science side of things and use them for restoration. And, if that framework did work, it would create a really important role for ecology in terms of providing solutions to some of the negative impacts that humans have had on the environment.

But, I soon realized that this concept was a very simplified, human-centered way of thinking about things. So, one of the first things I started thinking about was shifting our understanding from thinking about ecosystems as linear to thinking about nonlinear dynamics. Maybe, when a system gets stuck in a degraded state, it’s actually stuck and not changing at all. And, if that’s true, you might actually be able to cross a threshold and cause really rapid recovery.

We were bringing in ideas from all kinds of complex system theories, like economics or even marriage dynamics. Really, we were thinking that maybe there’s a more productive way to approach restoration that takes into account alternative stable states.

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You’re receiving this award, in part, because you played a major role in changing some of the fundamental theories in the field of restoration ecology. You just referenced some of the ideas in your now famous paper “Alternative states and positive feedbacks in restoration ecology.” What was the next big theoretical shift?

Yeah, so I think this is where you start to get into ideas that are a little more controversial. First, there’s this idea of novel ecosystems. It’s the idea that, in restoration, you might never fully get back to a historical reference state, for instance you might never be able to get rid of certain exotic species. Instead, you might be dealing with a new ecosystem that has no analog, but might still have some value. You might still have an ecosystem that benefits both nature and humans, but has changed forever.

Of course this makes things not so black and white. Some worry that it creates a slippery slope and that people could take advantage of it and say that anything they do is restoration.��

But, I think it’s probably going to become less controversial as time goes on. We have to provide ways that people can actually use these ideas in the world. And, these concepts have also spurred growth for things like research into ecosystem services — how nature can provide services. Things like meeting the demands of a productive landscape for rangeland or increasing water holding capacity or controlling flooding.

We can accept that we’re not going to go back to the past, but still set strong goals and maintain strong ideals, like fostering biological diversity and developing nature-based solutions to problems.

I think a lot of people that are just learning about restoration now, like undergrads, are kind of surprised that this was even controversial. The reality is that everything is changing.��

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Suding's colleague Julie Larson checks instrumentation for the Drought Net Experiment, Boulder Open Space. Credit: Suding.

Suding's colleagues Laurel Brigham and Jane Smith prepare for tundra fieldwork, Niwot Ridge, Colorado. Credit: Nancy Shackelford.

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When you look back at your career so far, what are some things that you are proud of?

I hope I have given people some ways to think about management a little bit out of the box. Ways to break negative feedback that aren’t just going with the status quo. I think that has resonated with some people.

I also hope that I've allowed people to think more intentionally about the goals for particular natural systems. Maybe, instead of beating yourself up because you'll never meet certain ideals, maybe you can consider the value that that piece of land still has. Really thinking about how management goals can shift without losing the conservation mandate.

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What questions or problems drive your work today?

Locally, I think the Fire question is super important. We’re working on ways to balance managing fire risk with also supporting the incredible diversity we have in grasslands and their ability to store carbon in the soil. It’s a complex problem without a single overarching goal, but hopefully we can find some more balanced solutions.��

One other thing that I’m curious about is potentially finding the best way to get Bison back onto our local grasslands. There’s a lot of potential in terms of both ecological health and cultural significance. This is still in the very early stages though, so who knows what will happen.

The UN declared this the decade of ecosystem restoration, and there’s been some debate over whether that means it’s just a decade of increased tree planting and reforestation, or if grasslands fit into that. These are sites that have huge conservation value on their own.��

I think we need more appreciation of what we've been calling old growth grasslands. We can't see all the complexity, because it's below ground. But it's there. There's all sorts of crazy underground roots and dynamics that you could see if you flipped it over. I think it's as amazing as an old growth forest.

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Suding heads out for fieldwork on Boulder Open Space. Credit: Matt Talarico, Impact Media Lab.

If you have questions about this story, or would like to reach out to INSTAAR for further comment, you can contact Senior Communications Specialist Gabe Allen at gabriel.allen@colorado.edu.