Active restoration
Active ecological restoration involves the integration of management techniques, such as revegetation, herbicide application, or mechanical soil disturbance to take an ecosystem from a degraded state to one that is functional, self-sustaining and resilient. In weed dominant systems, restoration efforts that focus to remove invasive plants and promote dense, native competition are often the most successful. In order to actively restore a degraded landscape, understanding the sites history can be critical. The history of a site can identify the factors that moved it into a degraded state, and whether these changes occurred rapidly or continuously over an extended interval (Prober & Thiele, 2005). Further, the historic vegetation cover can act as a restoration target, and guide managers on revegetation assemblages (Prober & Thiele, 2005). Active restoration of weed dominated temperate grasslands should consider; i) the removal of the weeds biomass, ii) manipulation of the soil to return it to remnant condition, iii) revegetation of native propagules, and ix) site specific grazing management.