Ensuring the long‐term persistence of tropical forest restoration projects is vital to maintaining carbon stocks, biodiversity, and other benefits of restored ecosystems. But our understanding of the factors that determine restoration longevity—the age that a restored ecosystem attains before being converted to another land use—is limited, and derived primarily from studies based on remote sensing or observations at a single site over time. In this article, we apply a new approach by surveying restoration practitioners from across the tropics on the factors that they perceive to influence restoration longevity. Through an online survey (including categorical and open‐ended questions) we asked practitioners about the ecological and social characteristics of their restoration projects, and their views on what factors contribute to project longevity. We summarized the information on project characteristics, and conducted thematic analysis and coding of the longevity drivers discussed by respondents. A total of 29 respondents from 15 tropical countries completed our survey, with the majority of projects occurring on previously pastured lands in wet and lowland tropical forests. Practitioners discussed social factors more than twice as frequently as ecological factors. The most frequently cited social factor key to restoration longevity was engagement with multiple stakeholders, followed by long‐term funding, the need for innovative project design, as well as effective and inspirational leadership. Overall, the voices of practitioners underscore the critical need to address local social context in order to achieve long‐term forest recovery.

中文翻译：

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从业者对热带森林恢复寿命决定因素的看法

确保热带森林恢复项目的长期持久性对于维持碳储量，生物多样性以及恢复的生态系统的其他利益至关重要。但是，我们对确定恢复寿命的因素（恢复的生态系统在转换为另一种土地用途之前所达到的年龄）的理解是有限的，并且主要是基于对单个站点随时间进行的遥感或观测研究而得出的。在本文中，我们通过对来自热带地区的恢复从业人员进行调查，了解他们认为会影响恢复寿命的因素，从而采用了一种新方法。通过在线调查（包括分类和不限成员名额的问题），我们询问了从业人员其修复项目的生态和社会特征，以及他们对哪些因素有助于项目寿命的看法。我们总结了有关项目特征的信息，并对受访者讨论的长寿驱动因素进行了主题分析和编码。来自15个热带国家的总共29位受访者完成了我们的调查，其中大部分项目发生在湿地和低地热带森林中以前放牧的土地上。从业人员讨论社会因素的频率是生态因素的两倍以上。恢复寿命最长的最常被提及的社会因素是与多个利益相关者的参与，其次是长期资金，对创新项目设计的需求以及有效和鼓舞人心的领导能力。总体而言，从业者的声音强调了实现本地森林长远恢复的迫切需要，即应对当地社会环境。