Wetland restoration efforts conducted in Louisiana require monitoring the effectiveness of individual projects as well as monitoring the cumulative effects of all projects in restoring, creating, enhancing, and protecting the coastal landscape. The effectiveness of the traditional paired-reference monitoring approach in Louisiana has been limited because of difficulty in finding comparable test sites. CRMS is a multiple reference approach that uses aspects of hydrogeomorphic functional assessments and probabilistic sampling.

This approach includes a suite of sites that encompass the range of ecological conditions for each stratum, with projects placed on a continuum of conditions found for that stratum. Trajectories in reference sites are then compared with project trajectories through time. The approach could serve
as a model for evaluating
wetland ecosystems.