Duke Restore is a Duke University initiative, based in the Nicholas School of the Environment, focused on advancing the field of ecosystem restoration to enhance resilience of natural and human systems.
Strategic approaches that integrate functions of both engineered and natural systems are needed to facilitate recovery of valuable ecosystems in the face of intense global change. This need is especially urgent in coastal areas, where >40% of the human population resides and 90% of international trade activity occurs, and where extreme storms, drought, sea level rise, pollution, and environmental degradation pervasively threaten natural and human communities. Restoring ecosystems is now being championed as a scalable strategy to increase resilience of both natural and human systems.
Our Vision
Our vision is for Duke Restore to become a global leader in ecosystem restoration and cultivation so that this conservation intervention can become a realistic recovery strategy for all ecosystems (terrestrial to marine) and economies in the face of intensifying global stress.
The next century will, I believe, be the era of restoration in ecology.
E. O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life