Simultaneous environmental changes challenge biodiversity persistence and human wellbeing. The science and practice of restoration ecology, in collaboration with other disciplines, can contribute to overcoming these challenges. This endeavor requires a solid conceptual foundation based in empirical research which confronts, tests and influences theoretical developments. We review conceptual developments in restoration ecology over the last 30 years. We frame our review in the context of changing restoration goals which reflect increased societal awareness of the scale of environmental degradation and the recognition that inter‐disciplinary approaches are needed to tackle environmental problems. Restoration ecology now encompasses facilitative interactions and network dynamics, trophic cascades, and above‐ and belowground linkages. It operates in a non‐equilibrium, alternative states framework, at the landscape scale, and in response to changing environmental, economic and social conditions. Progress has been marked by conceptual advances in the fields of trait‐environment relationships, community assembly, and understanding the links between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Conceptual and practical advances have been enhanced by applying evolving technologies, including treatments to increase seed germination and overcome recruitment bottlenecks, high throughput DNA sequencing to elucidate soil community structure and function, and advances in satellite technology and GPS tracking to monitor habitat use. The synthesis of these technologies with systematic reviews of context dependencies in restoration success, model based analyses and consideration of complex socio‐ecological systems will allow generalizations to inform evidence based interventions. Ongoing challenges include setting realistic, socially acceptable goals for restoration under changing environmental conditions, and prioritizing actions in an increasingly space‐competitive world. Ethical questions also surround the use of genetically modified material, translocations, taxon substitutions, and de‐extinction, in restoration ecology. Addressing these issues, as the Ecological Society of America looks to its next century, will require current and future generations of researchers and practitioners, including economists, engineers, philosophers, landscape architects, social scientists and restoration ecologists, to work together with communities and governments to rise to the environmental challenges of the coming decades.

Summary: With climate change, heat waves are becoming increasingly frequent, intense and broader in spatial extent. However, while the lethal effects of heat waves on humans are well documented, the impacts on flora are less well understood, perhaps except for crops. We summarize recent findings related to heat wave impacts including: sublethal and lethal effects at leaf and plant scales, secondary ecosystem effects, and more complex impacts such as increased heat wave frequency across all seasons, and interactions with other disturbances. We propose generalizable practical trials to quantify the critical bounding conditions of vulnerability to heat waves. Collectively, plant vulnerabilities to heat waves appear to be underappreciated and understudied, particularly with respect to understanding heat wave driven plant die‐off and ecosystem tipping points.

Heat waves have profoundly impacted biota globally over the past decade, especially where their ecological impacts are rapid, diverse, and broad-scale. Although usually considered in isolation for either terrestrial or marine ecosystems, heat waves can straddle ecosystems of both types at subcontinental scales, potentially impacting larger areas and taxonomic breadth than previously envisioned. Using climatic and multi-species demographic data collected in Western Australia, we show that a massive heat wave event straddling terrestrial and maritime ecosystems triggered abrupt, synchronous, and multi-trophic ecological disruptions, including mortality, demographic shifts and altered species distributions. Tree die-off and coral bleaching occurred concurrently in response to the heat wave, and were accompanied by terrestrial plant mortality, seagrass and kelp loss, population crash of an endangered terrestrial bird species, plummeting breeding success in marine penguins, and outbreaks of terrestrial wood-boring insects. These multiple taxa and trophic-level impacts spanned >300,000 km²—comparable to the size of California—encompassing one terrestrial Global Biodiversity Hotspot and two marine World Heritage Areas. The subcontinental multi-taxa context documented here reveals that terrestrial and marine biotic responses to heat waves do not occur in isolation, implying that the extent of ecological vulnerability to projected increases in heat waves is underestimated.