- A Tribute and Transition
It was with excitement that I accepted the editor role with Ecological Restoration beginning with this issue. While further journal updates are planned for future editorials, this editorial is devoted to thanking outgoing editor Steven Handel and the journal staff who worked with Steven, all of whom are staying on with the journal.
Serving as editor of Ecological Restoration, which Steven began in 2010, is a small portion of Steven’s acclaimed career of scientific productivity and service to the broader community that has reached many people, myself included. After graduating with a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Cornell University in 1976, Steven held faculty positions at the University of South Carolina and Yale University. While at Yale, Steven directed the Yale University Botanical Garden (Marsh Botanical Garden), one of numerous service positions advancing the use of native plants, ecological restoration, and human connections with ecosystems that Steven pursued throughout his career. Arriving at Rutgers University in 1985, Steven proceeded to become Professor of Ecology and Director of the Hutcheson Memorial Forest and Center for Urban Restoration Ecology starting in 1996. In 2015, five years after becoming Ecological Restoration’s editor, Steven became Distinguished Professor of Ecology at Rutgers. Throughout this period, he was incredibly active in a variety of initiatives and additional positions, such as serving on the Society for Ecological Restoration’s Board of Directors from 1997–2001, as editor of Urban Habitats from 2002–2006, as Visiting Professor of Ecology at Stockholm University, Sweden, in 2009, and as Distinguished Advisor for the Board of Trustees, Brooklyn Botanic Garden (2000–2012), among many other activities.
Steven led and contributed to numerous ecological restoration and habitat enhancement projects fostering connecting local communities with ecosystems, especially in urban areas. Among many examples, Steven’s team won an international competition for landscape design for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Steven was the lead restoration ecologist for designing urban habitat enhancement in Orange County Great Park in Irvine, California. These and other efforts led to Steven receiving the Society for Ecological Restoration’s highest research honor, the Theodore M. Sperry Award, in 2011 for “. . . pioneering work in the restoration of urban areas.” In 2023, Steven was awarded the LaGasse Medal by the American Society of Landscape Architects in recognition of 40 years of achievements in “the management and conservancy of natural resources and public landscapes.”
During all of these activities, Steven maintained exemplary scientific productivity and has over 100 publications. While I would not meet Steven in person until decades later, several of his publications left a large impression on me during my undergraduate and graduate studies. For example, as a student, I was inspired by Handel et al. (1997) reporting rooting ecology and adaptability of 22 species of native trees and shrubs planted for revegetation atop what was the largest landfill in the world, in Staten Island, New York. I was impressed by this work finding ecological solutions to reestablishing biodiversity and reclaimed land uses in this type of degraded environment near urban areas. Indeed, this early work by Steven is part of a broader effort anticipated to continue well into the 2030s to fully convert the old landfill into Freshkills Park. This park is projected to become three times the size of Central Park and the largest public park established in New York City since the 1800s.
In another example, Steven’s work untangling how seeds may disperse to restoration sites aided my understanding of decision-making for whether active revegetation (e.g., seeding or outplanting) is required to achieve ecological restoration goals or whether they can be achieved by activities promoting natural seed dispersal (Robinson and Handel 2000). Using a novel, thought-provoking experiment, Robinson and Handel (2000) showed that strategic plantings that attract seed-dispersing birds to restoration sites could increase natural colonization by native plants.
Along with editing Ecological Restoration, Steven has made a career-long commitment to communicating results of scientific investigations and restoration projects to a diversity of audiences and has delivered over 200 public talks and workshops. After reading Steven’s papers for decades and working with him as a contributor and Editorial...