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Land degradation is a primary issue that affects environmental conservation and socioeconomic development. However, ecological restoration has complex and poorly understood consequences for the structure and composition of future ecosystems and socioeconomic systems. To illustrate the complexity of ecological restoration, we discuss the potential links between China's ongoing large-scale ecological restoration practices and the resulting changes of natural factors such as landscape characteristics, climate, and vegetation communities. These changes may lead to restoration difficulty when the goal is to rebuild a system that resembles the pre-disturbance state. Even though the intentions of ecological restoration may be good, it is necessary to harmonize the ecological effects with simultaneous and future social changes, thereby benefiting both nature and society. Any simplistic or extreme approach to ecological restoration is potentially dangerous because the long-term effects on nature and society are generally unknown, so careful monitoring will be required, particularly for large-scale projects.
