EDITOR'S CHOICE: Confronting contingency in restoration: management and site history determine outcomes of assembling prairies, but site characteristics and landscape context have little effect

Summary The outcomes of ecological restoration are notoriously unpredictable, but we have no general predictive understanding of this contingency. Management decisions can have strong effects on restoration outcomes, but in other cases may be overwhelmed by site characteristics (e.g. soil conditions), landscape context (e.g. abundance of similar habitat) or historical factors (e.g. priority effects). However, we generally cannot predict which of...