Great Lakes Shoreline Restoration: Evaluation and Benchmarks

Abstract

Ecosystem restoration has become one of the most common forms of natural resource management, even outpacing habitat conservation as more and more ecosystems are degraded by human activities. But restoration efforts often lack a monitoring component to assess their impacts on ecosystems and to quantify their level of success, which is important for understanding which practices are most effectual to restoring the structure and function of ecosystems. This report examines the outcomes of Great Lakes shoreline restoration projects that have been funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Restoration Center. Initially, I had planned to collate monitoring data from these projects to perform a quantitative analysis and evaluation of project success. However, after finding that little to no data were available, I constructed a survey of practitioners who ran the restoration projects to evaluate four primary questions: (1) What were the general restoration project characteristics in terms of its goals, cost, size, ecological systems, and target organisms? (2) Were there clearly stated goals, quantifiable objectives, and was a well-developed management plan in place? (3) Was ecological monitoring conducted and, if so, was a statistical analysis of the data compared to a baseline at a spatial or temporal reference site? (4) Was there a demonstrated success through ecosystem improvements post-restoration? While I was able to assess questions (1) through (3) from my survey, answers to question (4) proved ambiguous given that ecosystem improvements were largely evaluated by expert opinion and self-reporting by the project managers/leads for most of the projects. Despite most survey respondents claiming to have conducted monitoring, actual data from projects could rarely be obtained or was presented in an unusable format in reports, leaving success to be largely defined by the subjective interpretation of the project leads. My findings parallel those of other reviews of restoration projects, which have emphasized that projects with clear, quantifiable goals and reliable monitoring programs represent the minority of restoration efforts. If we are to evaluate restoration efforts and establish quantifiable benchmarks for success, funding agencies should require quantifiable goals in project designs, insist on statistically valid monitoring programs, require practitioners make monitoring data available for review, consider including projects in their funding portfolio that focus on quantifying the success of other restoration projects in the portfolio, and include technical expertise on restoration efforts.