Coastal habitats are altered by both land use pressures and climate change impacts. Reserve habitats represent a gradient from pristine to degraded, and as such, are representative of the range of habitats within their regions. As a microcosm of their broader regional context, reserves offer the restoration community opportunities to explore the science behind restoration through manipulative restoration opportunities, engagement of the research community, and implementation of long-term monitoring of both restoration and reference sites.
Reserves are responding to habitat alteration through active restoration and through restoration science. A number of reserves have implemented restoration projects that are hypothesis-driven. Restoration reference data acquired at reserves include the abiotic data acquired by the System-Wide Monitoring Program (link), biotic monitoring of wetlands and submerged aquatic vegetation, sedimentation rates from surface elevation tables (SETs), and ground water monitoring. Reserve staff are enhancing their capacity to establish local elevation networks to tie all monitoring data to a common elevation reference system and to local tidal datums. Through this monitoring infrastructure, reserve s are beginning to plan restoration projects within the context of projected impacts from long-term climate change.
Stewardship Stories
Restoration Science in the Reserve System
- South Slough – Anderson Creek Restoration – Water temperature as a target for restoration of salmon habitat
- South Slough – Forest Restoration as a strategy for carbon sequestration
- South Slough – Winchester Creek Tidal Restoration
- Hudson River – Dam removal – restoration of migratory stream habitat
- Hudson River – living shoreline restoration
- Jobos Bay – sea grass restoration
- Tijuana River NERR – Model marsh restoration
Restoration Reference Sites
Five reserves were funded by the NOAA Restoration Center to evaluate the success of restoration projects funded by the Estuarine Restoration Act since 2000. These five reserves established coordinated monitoring protocols at their reserve reference sites and at a total of 18 restored sites. The last year of the three year project will be completed in the summer of 2010 and project results will be available by the spring of 2011. The following reserves are participating in this project:
- North Carolina
- Chesapeake Bay, Virginia
- Narragansett Bay, RI
- Wells, ME
- South Slough, OR
