>Home Introduction Climate Variability Impacts on Ecosys. Degradation & Restoration in Chesapeake Bay Baseline Variability: Chesapeake Bay Chesapeake Bay WQ & Climate Variability FL Everglades: Hydro. Changes & Degradation Everglades Climate Variability & Relevance Role of Time in Restoration Planning Acknowledgements References Figures

Climate extremes causing droughts, floods, or large temperature fluctuations can complicate ecosystem restoration efforts focused on local and regional human disturbance. Restoration targets often are based primarily on monitoring data and modeling simulations, which provide information on short-term species' response to disturbance and environmental variables. Consequently, the targets may be unsustainable under the spectrum of natural variability inherent to the system or under changes associated with future climate change. Increasingly, ecologists and restoration planners recognize the value of the long temporal perspective provided by paleoecological data. Advances in paleoclimatology, including better climate proxy methods and temporal resolution, contribute to our understanding of ecosystem response to anthropogenic and climatic forcing at all timescales. We highlight paleoecological research in Chesapeake Bay and the Florida Everglades and summarize its contributions to restoration planning. Integration of paleoecological, historic, monitoring, and modeling efforts provides the best means to develop sustainable, adaptive management strategies for ecosystem restoration.