Tools for Monitoring Coastal Habitats

Thayer, Gordon; McTigue, Teresa; Salz, Ronald; Merkey, David; Burrows, Felicity; Gayaldo, Perry

Healthy coastal habitats are not only important ecologically; they also support healthy coastal communities and improve the quality of people’s lives. Despite their many benefits and values, coastal habitats have been systematically modified, degraded, and destroyed throughout the United States and its protectorates beginning with European colonization in the 1600’s (Dahl 1990). As a result, many coastal habitats around the United States are in desperate need of restoration. The monitoring of restoration projects, the focus of this document, is necessary to ensure that restoration efforts are successful, to further the science, and to increase the efficiency of future restoration efforts. To address these and other issues associated with restoration monitoring, NOAA has provided guidance to the public in two volumes. The first volume, Science-Based Restoration Monitoring of Coastal Habitats, Volume One: A Framework for Monitoring Plans under the Estuaries and Clean Waters Act of 2000 (Public Law 160-457) was released in 2003. It outlines the steps necessary to develop a monitoring plan for any coastal habitat restoration project. Experienced restoration practitioners, biologists, and ecologists as well as those new to coastal habitat restoration and ecology can benefit from the step-by-step approach to designing a monitoring plan outlined in Volume One. Volume Two, Tools for Monitoring Coastal Habitats expands upon the information in Volume One. Volume Two is designed more for practitioners who do not have extensive experience in coastal ecology or social science than is Volume One. Professionals familiar with coastal habitats and their social and ecological aspects, however, may benefit from the annotated bibliographies, literature review, and other tools provided in Volume Two. Volume Two is intended to provide readers with information on and pertinent to monitoring of restoration activities and, in so doing, includes references to ecological and human dimensionscharacteristics and to restoration efforts. Volume Two is not intended, however, as a treatise on the ecology and social aspects of each of the habitats. Numerous texts and published documents that do this well are already available, particularly for the ecological characteristics. Likewise, detailed discussions of the restoration of the various habitats are also not presented; again, for many of the habitats, scientific publications on individual restoration methods and projects already exist. Volume Two is also not intended as a ‘how to’ or methods manual; many of these are already available on a regional or habitat specific basis1. Volume Two does not provide detailed procedures that practitioners can directly use in the field to monitor habitat characteristics, although it does mention or list many that are commonly used. The tremendous diversity of coastal habitats across the United States, the types and levels of impact to them, the differing scales of restoration activities, and variety of techniques used in restoration and restoration monitoring prevent the development of universal protocols. Thus, the authors of this volume have taken the approach of explaining, based on information found in the scientific literature, what can be measured during restoration monitoring, why it is important, and what information it provides about the progress of a restoration effort. Based on this information, the individual practitioner can then develop monitoring protocols suited to the goals of his or her particular restoration project.