Seedling emergence and summer survival after direct seeding for woodland restoration on old fields in south-western Australia

Restoration opportunities provided by an emerging carbon market have largely focused on large-scale woodland restoration projects. Gondwana Link is one such project operating in a 1000-km corridor in south-western Australia. We identified environmental factors affecting the success of woody-species restoration at a dry-woodland Gondwana Link site, Peniup, by relating the emergence and survival of 1522 seedlings to abiotic and biotic variables, including soil conditions and weed cover. We found soil conditions were highly variable across the site and, together with the dry Mediterranean-climate summer, affected seedling emergence and summer survival. Seedling emergence was higher in sandy soils, but summer survival was higher in clay soils. Most of the seedlings that emerged and survived the summer were in either the Fabales or Myrtaceae family. We concluded that attempts to analyse restoration outcomes that do not consider how the influence of primary abiotic and biotic factors changes over time may mask the mechanisms driving seedling establishment.