Coastal Services Center

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For the Expert: National Review of Innovative and Successful Coastal Habitat Restoration

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< Innovative Methods and Techniques | Adaptive Management >

Monitoring

Monitoring is a critical element of restoration, whereby performance is assessed to determine whether the restoration project is progressing toward the goals of the project. The information gathered from a monitoring program is essential for adaptive management and for developing a greater understanding of restoration ecology. A guide for developing a coastal restoration monitoring plan was recently developed by NOAA: "Science-Based Restoration Monitoring of Coastal Habitats." Volume I is "A Framework for Monitoring Plans under the Estuaries and Clean Water Act 2000" and Volume II provides "Tools for Monitoring Coastal Habitats" (NOAA 2004b). The components of monitoring that are discussed below are those that are innovative or integral to improving the success of a restoration project.

Pre-Restoration Monitoring

Pre-restoration monitoring can be conducted to determine the existing functions as well as provide information on potential restoration endpoints and help develop project goals. For example, monitoring of the existing functions of a degraded Phragmites australis -dominated marsh relative to native Spartina spp. marshes along the Woodbridge River in New Jersey showed that reintroducing tidal inundation to the restoration site would enhance water quality functions and the development of salt marsh community structure and food webs (Sturdevant and Craft 2002).

Pre-restoration monitoring can also be used to assess the contaminant release potential from restoration actions. The presence of contaminants can pose ecological and human health risks and can also have significant cost implications. At the Willapa River salt-marsh restoration project in Washington State, for example, researchers analyzed physical and chemical properties of soil, sediment, and water samples as well as coliform bacteria levels of the water and resuspended sediment at selected restoration sites and reference sites prior to dike breach and removal (Diefenderfer and Ward 2002). The researchers concluded that this type of evaluation can improve project design and minimize risk to biological organisms at restoration sites with potential contamination.

Standard Monitoring Protocols

Standard monitoring protocols are important in situations where many observers are involved. For example, the California Regional Kelp Restoration Program uses teams of volunteer divers from local California CoastKeeper affiliates for monitoring. The program developed the Kelp Restoration and Monitoring Protocol to provide detailed instructions and training for the volunteers to ensure consistent and accurate monitoring of the extensive kelp restoration program (California CoastKeeper Alliance 2003).

Standard monitoring protocols are also essential where results from many projects are part of a coordinated program. The Commencement Bay Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) Restoration Monitoring Program in Tacoma, Washington, provides a matrix of established monitoring criteria, including seven physical, twelve biological, and two chemical criteria (Steger 2003). Project managers can select some or all of these criteria to monitor depending on the goals and objectives of the project.

The Great Bay Estuary Eelgrass Mitigation project in New Hampshire provided an opportunity for the development of a new protocol for assessing natural and restored eelgrass sites. Because the protocol can be used with any seagrass species, the researchers developed SeagrassNet, a global seagrass monitoring program. The monitoring protocol, sample field data sheets, data handling instructions, and a manual for scientific monitoring are available through the Internet (SeagrassNet 2003).

Functional Assessment

One popular method for determining restoration success is to compare the functionality of the restored habitat to that of natural habitat. This is complicated, however, by the fact that there is significant variability in both restored and natural systems and the functional parameters that characterize natural coastal habitat are often not well understood. Recent research has contributed to a greater understanding and application of many popular functional assessment tools. For example, stable isotope methods that were developed to analyze food webs in tidal salt marsh systems are now being used to assess the ability of created and restored systems to provide food for target species (Levin and Currin 2002). Bioenergetics models are being proposed as a tool for designing coastal wetland restoration (Madon et al. 2001). These models estimate growth of fish under various environmental conditions and are being used by University of Washington researchers to determine how estuarine marsh habitats in different stages of recovery contribute to the growth of juvenile salmon (Gray, Simenstad, Bottom, and Cornwell 2002). See Restoration Research (Section 3.1) for more information on innovative methods of functional assessment.

Long-term monitoring

The CWPPRA example

The restoration plan developed pursuant to CWPPRA requires 1) "an evaluation of the effectiveness of each coastal wetland restoration project in achieving long-term solutions to arresting coastal wetland loss in Louisiana," and 2) "a scientific evaluation of the effectiveness of coastal wetland restoration projects carried out under the plan in creating, restoring, protecting and enhancing coastal wetlands in Louisiana." Thus mandated, funding is provided for the monitoring of each CWPPRA project for 20 years. Coastal Louisiana scientists and technical experts consensually developed standardized protocols for seven categories of monitoring variables: water quality, hydrology, soils and sediments, vegetative health, habitat mapping, wildlife, and fisheries (Steyer et al. 1995). In addition to providing long-term data to look at status and trends, the monitoring program is designed to investigate cause and effect through hypothesis testing, which requires the establishment of paired reference areas (Steyer and Llewellyn 2000).

Monitoring is based on evaluating project-specific goals and objectives. After the initial nine years of monitoring, many CWPPRA projects have met their goals, (e.g., increasing land:water ratios, increasing submerged aquatic vegetation abundance, and reducing erosion) while others have not. Importantly, the data generated from this monitoring approach are used not only to evaluate the effectiveness of the specific project, but also to provide feedback necessary to make active management decisions. For example, water level monitoring at a marsh management project at East Mud Lake showed that elevations of water control structures were set too high, affecting the duration of flooding. The site was resurveyed and structure operations were adjusted. Monitoring of wave reduction behind a variety of demonstration shoreline protection structures at Lake Salvador has provided important engineering design information for future shoreline projects (Steyer 2003).

As the scale of CWPPRA projects has increased over time, finding adequate reference areas has become increasingly difficult. Also, because many of the projects are adjacent to one another, the potential for cumulative, indirect influences on landscape-level processes has increased, making evaluation of individual project effectiveness increasingly difficult. A monitoring program was needed that effectively monitors at the ecosystem level. Hence, a new monitoring program, the Coast-wide Reference Monitoring System (CRMS), was approved for full implementation in 2003 (Steyer 2003). A network or "pool" of reference sites are being established, which will allow for both project-specific evaluations and cumulative evaluations on both a hydrologic-basin and coast-wide level. These reference sites will span the range of variability from disturbed to pristine across the various vegetation habitats of the Louisiana coast. Restoration projects will then be compared with a suite of reference sites to look at habitat change trajectories over time (Steyer et al. 2002). This analysis will provide a means of evaluating the effectiveness of the restoration on the entire coastal ecosystem versus just those areas affected by individual projects.

Through monitoring the science of restoration can be improved by evaluating the progress of systems over time, determining functional roles of restored habitat, and comparing restored systems to natural systems. Research can play an important role in the assessment of restored systems by improving monitoring methods and providing a better understanding of the functioning of restored systems (Zedler and Callaway 2000). Finally, the longer a project is evaluated, the better the understanding of the system trajectories over time.