Resource Database

SER Webinar: Invasive Japanese knotweed as a catalyst for streambank erosion

Once established, knotweed s.l. can displace riparian plants, meaning that soil stability once provided by displaced roots is lost, carrying significant knock-on implications for watershed management. We propose that knotweed s.l. rhizomes both displace roots and the structure they provide to soil, and also amplify bank-erosion forces, especially during floods. Further, erosive forces create vegetative propagules, with larger flow events creating larger numbers of propagules and providing the vector for short- and long-distance downstream spread within the watershed. Induced erosion is therefore the main driver of knotweed s.l. invasions along waterways. As some hydrological regimes shift towards more frequent and severe storm events in response to climate change, positive feedback loops may develop in these regions between existing knotweed s.l. populations, sudden riverbank failure, and increased flood-related damage, with presumably significant impacts on riparian infrastructure. While the continued spread of this invasive could have significant riparian flood resiliency consequences if left unchecked, mindful action to control these plants is likely to be beneficial financially, socially, and ecologically within any invaded watershed. Brian Colleran is a Certified Ecological Restoration Practitioner (CERP) and Professional Wetland Scientist (PWS), with a Master’s degree in Natural Resource Management. He has also acquired both the basic and advanced Field Botany certificates from the Native Plant Trust and has worked in several capacities with both state and local wetland laws in Massachusetts. Brian’s career has focused on the restoration and conservation of freshwater habitats, primarily through invasive species and riparian area management. Currently, he is a Principal with Ecological Land Management, and recently returned from Patagonia where he assisted with restoration restoration projects in the Torres del Paine National Park as well as reporting on the southernmost knotweed stands in the world.

SER Webinar: Ecological Restoration in the Context of Environmental Racism

Jacqueline Patterson is the Senior Director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program, and joins us to help establish the basis for a conversation about how those of us in the field of ecological restoration can begin to address the issue of environmental racism.

SER-WC Webinar: MADW Monarch Butterfly Habitat Restoration

As part of SER-Western Canada’s ongoing webinar series, we’re very pleased to have Dr. Jaramillo Lopez join us to talk about the plight of the Monarch butterflies that overwinter near Morelia, Mexico. This webinar will include information and resources about what you can do to support Monarch butterflies (or your other local pollinators). We encourage all attendees to take some time in the week following the webinar to plant or seed native species that support Monarchs and other pollinators, and then let us know about how it went! Together, we can protect this beautiful species for generations to come

SER-RM Webinar: Fuels Mitigation in Wyoming

Nick Zaczek shares his insights into fuel mitigation strategies in Wyoming. This webinar is part of SER-RM’s ongoing Wildfire Restoration series

SER-E Webinar: OBN, 30 years of science-practice collaboration in the Netherlands

Join W.A. (Wim) Wiersinga to learn more about his work as Program Leader of the Dutch Knowledge Network for Restoration and Management of Nature (OBN).

SER-NW Webinar: Tiscornia Marsh

Join Douglas Mundo, Marco Berger, and Pablo Quiroga for a discussion of their work with the Tiscornia Marsh Restoration and SLR Adaptation Project.

Conserving Shellfish Reefs – A Systematic Review Reveals the Need to Broaden Research Efforts

Globally shellfish reefs have experienced unprecedented declines from historical levels, imperilling the surrounding ecosystems and the services they provide. Shellfish conservation and restoration projects have emerged to combat and reverse this decline but are hindered by a scattered knowledge base and a lack of evidence-based best practice. To address this concern, we conducted a systematic review of English-language peer-reviewed articles studying the impacts of conservation-based actions on reef-building bivalves. A comprehensive search identified 281 relevant articles for the review. Articles were then categorized to establish the temporal and geographic extent of shellfish reef conservation research, quantify collaboration within the field, and develop a systematic map of the distribution of evidence across intervention and outcome categories. The results confirm a substantial increase in shellfish reef research with 72% of articles published since 2010. However, this evidence base is skewed, with 80% of research occurring in the United States and Northern Europe, 71% only on oysters, and 58% by only academia-affiliated authors. The systematic map of linkages and gaps also reveals disparities in the evidence base, as ecological interventions and outcomes are undertaken and measured at a far greater rate than social interventions and outcomes, despite evidence that social aspects are critical components of conservation work. To ensure future restoration practitioners have evidence that is relevant to the circumstances of their projects, this evidence base needs to be diversified and we offer recommendations on reprioritizations for future research as well as a comprehensive database of existing shellfish conservation papers.

Field sampling approaches on seismic lines: A comparison between circular plots and belt transects

Extensive in-situ oil exploration is conducted in the Boreal forest, marking the landscape with an expansive network of seismic lines. These linear features fragment woodland caribou habitat and collectively result in the loss and degradation of ecosystem services associated with the removal of forest cover. Recently, research has been initiated to evaluate the success of restoration treatments (e.g., mounding, stem bending and tree planting) and the effects of confounding influences (e.g., fire and forestry activities).  The objective of our study was to test two seismic line monitoring data collection methods: circular plots and belt transects. Both of these sampling approaches are used or recommended in scientific literature and the Provincial Restoration and Establishment
Framework for Legacy Seismic line in Alberta. We aimed to determine the best method for accurately and efficiently capturing site conditions on seismic lines, and to assess if the datasets gathered using each approach yielded similar results.

When is a native not a native? Preliminary results of pollinator visitation to native Penstemon digitalis and its cultivated varieties

Native plants are being bred and modified for better horticultural performance and appearance. The cultivated varieties of native plants (i.e. nativars) are now used broadly in horticulture and sometimes restoration, particularly smaller scale projects. However, selection for horticulturally desirable traits such as novel floral forms and colors, and altered phenology, can lead to changes in floral attractiveness and rewards for pollinators.

In the summer of 2019, Penstemon digitalis and several of their nativars (‘Husker Red’, ‘Pocahontas’, Blackbeard’) were studied. The floral trait variation and pollinator attraction was compared. Preferences of different groups of floral visitors were determined through monitoring of phenology, pollinator observations, and floral trait measurements.

We found that all Penstemon have roughly the same first and end flower times, and peak between 180 to 185 days (Julian date). When more flowers are open, there is a corresponding peak in pollinator visitation. Both wild type and ‘Pocahontas’ have more open flowers and receive a higher average of pollinator visits per minute compared to the other taxa. Floral morphology is a distinct factor in pollinator diversity. Smaller flowers, such as ‘Blackbeard’ and ‘Husker Red’, attract small bees and flies whereas the larger flowers, wild type and ‘Pocahontas’, attract more bumblebees, large bees, and wasps. These results suggest that pollinator visitation varies between Penstemon digitalis and its nativars, primarily as a result of flflower size.

Introducing the Coral Sample Registry: A unified coral sample collection database in support of coral reef conservation worldwide

In the past decade the field of coral reef restoration has experienced a proliferation of data detailing coral strains used in research and restoration management, with no sign of information abatement. Restoration practitioners maintain internal records on fragment collection, genet performance, and out planting location and survivorship. Resource managers track permits, species, restoration locations, and performance across multiple stakeholders. Basic research groups have generated data sets and data pipelines detailing the genetic, genomic and phenotypic variants of corals. Each dataset is important in its own right, but collectively they are limited due to the inability to cross reference these proprietary data repositories for deeper insights and hypothesis testing.

Here, we present the Coral Sample Registry (CSR), an online resource which solves the first step in integrating such diverse data sets. Developed in collaboration with academics, management agencies and restoration practitioners in the South Florida area, the CSR centralizes information on sample collection events, issuing an accession number to each entry. Each accession number is unique and corresponding to a specific collection event of coral sample tissue, whether for research, preservation  or restoration purposes. As such the accession number now serves as the key to unlock the diversity of any information related to that sample’s provenance, across any and all data structures which include the accession number field. This database is open to all coral species, transferrable to regions beyond Florida, and open-source so that managers, academic researchers, and restoration practitioners may use the database internationally as a single information resource

Monitoring a quarter century of change in wetland forest types of the American Mid-Atlantic States

Forested wetlands are unique and valuable landscape components contributing numerous ecological services and human benefits. Monitoring trends in their area and condition is critical to assessing sustainability of these important ecosystems. This paper evaluates changes in wetland forest types spanning more than 25 years from 1990 to 2018 for the American Mid-Atlantic States. Data used for assessment was collected from ground based sample plots distributed across the States of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Plot data were sourced from the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Program of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service. In 2018 the area of wetland forest types in this Mid-Atlantic region totaled 5.2 million acres, down from 5.7 million acres in 1990. However, all of the decline occurred on private ownerships which dropped from 5.3 million acres to 4.6 million acres. Public ownership of wetland forest types increased from 0.4 million acres to less than 0.7 million acres. Public ownerships now contain 13 percent of the region’s wetland forest types. The paper further investigates changes which differ by State as well as factors behind the changes that include harvest levels, regeneration rates, weather events, and economic cycles. Identifying trends surrounding wetland forests provides information important to sustainable management decisions by planners and policy makers at numerous levels of society.

Spatially Balanced Sampling, Route Optimization and Drone Imagery to Advance Restoration Monitoring

As we enter the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, the importance of ecological restoration is of broad global interest. To understand the outcomes of ecological restoration efforts, sound monitoring plans which are time- and cost effective are necessary. However, many existing monitoring techniques are focused mainly at answering regulatory criteria and do not give a full understanding to the outcome of the restoration effort in place. Additionally, many commonly used monitoring techniques are expensive and considered burdensome to companies required to perform ecological restoration. Here, we present a study which compares small unmanned aircraft system (sUAS) imagery to handheld imagery to monitor vegetation on natural gas well pads undergoing restoration. These methods have numerous benefits over traditional techniques. In addition to showing these image-based techniques, we couple a spatially balanced sampling design, called balanced acceptance sampling, with the traveling salesperson algorithm to optimize the route of the sUAS and technician using a handheld camera. We find the sUAS can obtain images similar in quality to handheld images in ~7.5 minutes per location, whereas handheld image acquisition takes ~30 minutes per site. Both of these methods are significantly faster than typical line point transect which are subject to various forms of sampling error. We conclude that the use of sUAS should be considered as a viable option to monitor restoration efforts moving forward due to the time- and cost-saving, the improved statistical power and the ability to answer multiple regulatory criteria and while providing information to improve future restoration efforts.

The Global Restore Project: Data Sharing for Shared Success

The Global Restore Project (GRP) aims to bring together restoration researchers globally to pool existing data and knowledge for a deeper understanding of restoration science. Since our launch in 2019, we have partnered with the Global Arid Zone Project (GAZP), to bring together restoration data across global aridity gradients. We are collecting vegetation community monitoring data from actively restored (where seeding or planting treatments have been applied), passively restored and undisturbed remnant reference habitats for a rich, flexible, comparative framework to assess success. We are bringing together fragmented datasets collected over time by different teams, connecting references with local restoration and are developing tools for practitioners to be able to use. We envision that identifying spatial and temporal patterns of restoration success and failure has the power to inform predictive restoration science, to improve outcomes and reduce risk in restoration projects, and inform practical applications and policy. We will make these data completely open access and available to the community wherever possible, and intend to continue to grow these resources and tools over time. Here, we give an update on progress made, on our current status and invite interested people to reach out to us to chat about the many opportunities to get involved.

Using long-term monitoring data to measure restoration outcomes: a prairie case study

Restoration is rarely accomplished with a single management intervention. Instead, most sites require years or decades of ongoing work to achieve or maintain restoration goals. Here we share a case study of how long-term monitoring data were used to assess restoration outcomes and address issues to consider when collecting and maintaining long-term data.

Tallgrass prairies in the Great Plains of the United States are one of the most highly converted systems in the world. While individual management interventions in tallgrass prairies are relatively well-studied, the cumulative effect of long-term management is rarely documented. Using a 22-year monitoring dataset, we show that overall diversity increased in an unplowed prairie remnant; the number of prairie specialist species trended higher as well. Frequent prescribed fire in multiple seasons likely contributed to increasing diversity by favoring different species over time. Because of the long-term data available from this site, we can document important changes in a high-quality site.

Maintaining long-term monitoring data requires detailed documentation of sampling methods to account for staffing changes over time. Permanent markers for monitoring locations facilitates relocation of sample sites and consistency of data collection. Monitoring that is done annually is more likely to continue because it becomes part of an annual routine. To reduce the staff and time burden of annual monitoring, sample sites can be sampled on a rotating basis.

Challenges and Lessons Learned in the Muir Beach Wetland Restoration Project

Muir Beach wetland restoration began in 2009 with a large scale, multi-partner construction project that rerouted the terminus of Redwood Creek in Marin County, California. The project’s goals included improved hydrological function and improved habitat for threatened and endangered species including the California red-legged frog (Rana draytonii), steelhead trout (Oncorhychus mykiss), and coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch). Habitat restoration was performed for nine years post-construction without herbicides, utilizing a variety of revegetation methods, during specific seasons to reduce impacts on threatened and endangered species, and while preserving erosion control measures.

Important strategies to successful restoration include diverse methods for revegetation – field to field divisions, container plants, direct seeding, and willow stakes; lots of straw mulch to reduce invasive species recruitment; having a really strong plan for managing weeds downstream of infestations; and being in good touch with regulators on site needs and goals.

This presentation will focus on these strategies and lessons learned resulting in a landscape you would never know had been a construction site.

Coastal Restoration of the beach at Cap-des-Rosiers, Forillon National Park – A Unique Project in Canada

The Cap-des-Rosiers beach restoration project in Forillon National Park is one of the most impressive climate change adaptation projects ever carried out by Parks Canada. This project was conducted in response to more frequent extreme storm events and significant coastal erosion. In order to restore the natural dynamics of the coastal ecosystem and spawning sites of prey fish, Parks Canada restored a 1.7 km section of a beach by removing a protective rip-rap, dismantling a road, relocating a memorial site and planting native grasses.

The historical establishment of infrastructures in a zone at risk represents a major challenge for infrastructure management and ecological integrity. In the Cap-des-Rosiers area, the protection of a road in a very dynamic coastal ecosystem was costly, restricted beach access and resulted in the loss of coastal habitat and capelin spawning sites. Major and more frequent storm events also threatened a nearby wetland and burial site.

Following the completion of the project, the response of the coastal environment and the use of this newly created habitat by capelin is being monitored to evaluate project success. The results observed so far are beyond expectations. Since 2016, capelin spawning sites are constantly increasing and the beach profile is already stabilizing. More resilient to storm events, Cap-desRosiers beach is once again a rich habitat for biodiversity and an attractive area for nearby residents and visitors.

Restoration and Management Planning for Witty’s Lagoon Regional Park in Metchosin, Canada, with Special Focus on Camissonia contorta Habitat

Witty’s Lagoon Regional Park in Metchosin, Canada, comprises a number of different ecosystems and species, including several plant and bird species scheduled under Canada’s Species At Risk Act. One of these species is contorted-pod evening primrose (Camissonia contorta), which lives in the coastal sand ecosystem found on the sand spit. Unfortunately, the sand spit and many other areas of the park have been degraded by invasive plants and human activity.

This project has two primary objectives: first, to identify and prioritize existing values and threats within the park boundaries, and second, to create a restoration plan for the sand spit. These objectives were achieved by following the Conservation Standards set out by the Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP).

Ten conservation targets were chosen for the park. Field surveys were conducted to measure various indicators of health for each target. Miradi, CMP’s conservation software, was used to conduct viability analyses for each target and build a situation diagram for the entire park, which links the targets to their threats and other influencing factors. Next, potential restoration strategies were identified for the sand spit. A results chain was created in Miradi to illustrate how each strategy would affect the associated conservation targets and what types of activities would be required to obtain the desired restoration results.

This project showcases a successful collaboration between local government, the community, and academic institutions, and offers an excellent example of quantitative, documented restoration planning that combines complex goals into a unified framework

Spatial Planning for Long-term Restoration of Coastal Dunes: The Importance of Maintaining Adequate Space for Habitat-forming Plants and their Services

Dune restoration efforts represent decades of progress, but maintenance of restoration sites remains a key requirement due to the continued presence of threats such as invasive species and human disturbance. Climate change may generate even more pervasive threats within relatively short timeframes. Here we describe climate change scenario models of shoreline movement in Christchurch, New Zealand, characterised by a fine-grained marram-invaded dune system. Scenarios were calculated on 900 shore-perpendicular transects across 9km of coastline undergoing restoration and maintenance work that provides the primary protective barrier for nearby residential areas. Uncertainty was addressed through consideration of five independent scenarios, each representing a plausible SLR (sea-level rise) increment (0.25–1.25m) in relation to contemporary climate projections. We also incorporated the continuation of historical (75-year) accretion rates and associated uncertainties. The results demonstrate high vulnerability to climate change in a typical peri-urban setting, with dune elimination across a third of the study area in the 1m SLR scenario. The importance of maintaining at least the minimum foredune space was highlighted. Below a minimum width threshold (c.40 m), foredune depletion occurs from sand loss, with consequent height and volume losses, associated loss of coastal protection services, and biodiversity losses through fragmentation and contraction. Management approaches for maintaining the dune ecosystem include progressive establishment of managed retreat pockets where dune movement is encouraged alongside existing land-uses and hard defences. Through a focus on establishing dunes in locations currently occupied by other land uses, this presents an exciting new dimension for coastal restoration planning.

Applying remote sensing innovations to advance restoration governance

Upscaling ecosystem restoration will require a profound shift in the way this activity is planned, implemented, and monitored. Existing methods and technologies are still based on a plot-based restoration approach, with limited capacity to inform decision makers and track progress over large spatial and temporal scales. There is an urgent need to reduce the costs and increase the scalability of restoration methods, which can be achieved, in many different situations, based on remote sensing innovations. In this talk, I will describe how novel remote sensing tools have been used to scale up restoration monitoring at the Brazilian Atlantic Forest and contributed to improve existing restoration policies. I will explore how different remote sensing techniques, including lidar and hyperspectral data, and different platforms to obtain data, like drones, airplanes, and satellites, have been used to revolutionize the way forest structure and diversity is measured. Remote sensing can rapidly become the main strategy to monitor restoration over thousands or millions of hectares, and research has achieved promising results in this direction.

Assessing the resilience of nature-based coastal protection approaches to extreme events

As coastal populations continue to increase, the socioeconomic impacts of hurricanes and other major storm events are also expected to increase, with hurricane damages already costing the United States nearly a trillion dollars since 1980. To protect people, infrastructure, and property from storms, coastal residents frequently elect to harden their shorelines with seawalls and bulkheads, which has been shown to cause coastal habitat loss and degradation. Alternatively, nature-based approaches, such as living shorelines, can restore coastal habitat functions, while also preventing shoreline damage and erosion during storm events. Further, recent work has suggested that living shorelines can be less costly to maintain and require fewer repairs after storms than bulkheads. However, the ability of living shorelines to prevent shoreline damage and erosion over multiple storm events has not been evaluated. In many regions, including coastal North Carolina, multiple hurricanes have made landfall and have caused significant damage in the last decade. To understand the impacts of multiple hurricanes on waterfront properties and shoreline habitats, we conducted shoreline surveys and online surveys of waterfront residents before and after five hurricanes over ten years. Results suggest that living shorelines are resilient to multiple storm events, while bulkheads require repeated, costly interventions to provide continued protection.

Living Shorelines: Managing Urban Coastlines Through Community Engagement and Nature Based Solutions

Los Angeles is home to a large, diverse population that lives, works, and plays along its iconic coast. This thriving urban landscape in southern California, USA, provides a unique opportunity to explore the nexus between living shorelines, coastal hazards, and community resilience planning. Growing recognition of the value of beaches as resilient functional ecosystems is leading a regional paradigm shift away from heavily urbanized shorelines, where daily grooming currently eliminates vegetation, wrack, trash, and protective sand dunes. For urban coastal communities, living shoreline projects provide an innovative, nature-based adaptation strategy to increase the resilience of the coastline to sea level rise and storm erosion. Restored beach ecosystems provide a soft buffer to erosion, expanded habitat for native species, and recreational and educational opportunities for local communities.

Four scalable, regional case studies of nature-based coastal adaptation will be explored, including planning and permitting, public engagement and the incorporation of stakeholder feedback, methods of implementation, lessons learned, and the major outcomes from an ecological and topographic change perspective. Implementation methods to be discussed include the planting of native beach species, nearshore eelgrass bed restoration, invasive species removal, and the encouragement of dune growth via sand fencing and biomimicry staking. Efforts to foster community engagement via outreach, interpretive signage, and volunteer and internship work will also be discussed. These projects serve as demonstrations of the living shoreline concept in action, providing long-term data to inform future efforts alongside the direct benefits to the ecosystem, infrastructure, and surrounding communities.

Restoring Coastal Ecosystems: A Practitioners Perspective on Nature-Based Restoration Techniques to Manage Erosion

This oral presentation describes lessons learned in various coastal marsh restoration projects in a diversity of exposure to coastal storm energies over more than a decade. Although the examples provided are from North America, the innovative techniques described may be used to restore coastal shorelines worldwide. The use of native vegetation to stabilize eroded shorelines, in concert with soil bioengineering techniques is well adapted to withstand sea level rise and high-intensity storm events, while allowing landward migration of coastal vegetation and the critical habitat it supports. Both unsuccessful salt marsh restorations and successful salt marsh restorations will be clearly described, including a discussion of the causal features which led to the success or failure outcome of the restoration projects.

I will describe new methods and innovative uses of soil bioengineering installations to restore coastal salt marshes. The case studies described in this presentation demonstrate that the use of soft engineering and native vegetation may be considered a long-term solution for addressing coastal erosion without the use of stone armor, revetments, or other hard structures and the negative environmental impacts associated with traditional hard armoring of shorelines. Strategies ranging from coir-based marsh restorations to cobble reinforced salt marshes are proving to be adaptation design strategies to stabilize our coasts and protect important coastal habitats, which are facing threats from increased rates of erosion due to sea level rise and more frequent and higher intensity storm events.

The importance of scale for faunal colonisation, biodiversity, and ecosystem functioning in restored seagrass meadows

Anthropogenic stressors have reduced seagrass cover around the world. Restoration can reverse these declines, but seagrass restoration success has been low. Large-scale planting is known to increase restoration success by assuring scale-dependent interactions and feedback mechanisms, but also increases pressure on donor populations and associated monetary costs. Here, we tested the role of patch size and configuration in a large-scale eelgrass (Zostera marina) restoration project in the Swedish Skagerrak (North Sea). We planted four large (25 x 25 m) plots with different configurations and patch sizes (one continuous plot, three plots with large, medium, and small patches). We measured seagrass shoot density and associated invertebrate (epifauna and infauna) communities, biodiversity, and functional diversity, in comparison to a nearby healthy control meadow.

After one growing season, shoot density in the planted plots had increased but not yet reached the same density as in the meadow. The total invertebrate abundance was similar across the meadow and four planted plots. However, species richness was lower in the planted plots than the meadow, and the species composition, functional diversity, and community structure differed between the meadow and planted plots, and between different treatments (patch sizes). Overall, our results show that restored seagrass can quickly be colonised by diverse invertebrate communities, but that configuration and patch size are important determinants of the resulting community structure and functional traits. Several more years of monitoring will be necessary to fully understand how restoration scale affects biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, and to determine optimal restoration configuration.

Using the ecological restoration of dunes in Puerto Rico to increase the resilience of coastal communities and habitats to future storms and other effects of climate change

The Archipelago of Puerto Rico was severely impacted by hurricanes Irma, María in 2017 and by winter storm Riley in 2018. As a result of these events many of the coastal dunes on the north coast of the island were destroyed or severely degraded leaving coastal communities and wildlife habitats extremely vulnerable to the effects of future extreme weather events and climate change. Our project focuses on improving important physical conditions and the species composition of dunes in that area by contributing to the cessation of coastal threats and assisting in the recovery process.

To achieve this we installed wooden boardwalks, exclusion fences and signage to re-direct foot and vehicular traffic away from vegetated areas and to promote sand accumulation and increase vegetation cover. Sand trapping biomimicry matrices were used to increase sand volume and then the incipient dunes were stabilized by planting vegetation whose roots and rhizomes further trap and stabilize the sand making the dune more resistant to erosion.

An RTK-GPS-enabled unoccupied aerial vehicle (UAV) and photogrammetry software were used to collect baseline data, plan and monitor our restoration work.

These approaches allowed us to successfully repair breaches and create dunes in areas where they had been destroyed. Increases of more than 60% in sand volume and up to 100% of vegetation cover in a one-year period were observed in some areas. Our efforts also included an environmental education component.

These actions protect adjacent primary infrastructure and wildlife habitats from future storms and other effects of climate change.

West Bay Sanitary District’s Ecotone Levee – Using Nature Based Solutions to Safeguard Critical Infrastructure in San Francisco Bay

West Bay Sanitary District’s flow equalization and resource recovery facility is surrounded by levees designed to protect the site from tidal intrusion, as well as to protect San Francisco Bay from wastewater treated at the facility during certain wet weather conditions when wastewater diversion to the facility is necessary. Several areas along the levee are lower than the FEMA floodplain elevation, no longer protect the facility from tides, and do not protect against sea level rise. In coordination with state and federal resource agencies, design engineers, ecological restoration specialists, non-profits and university research affiliates, the District has incorporated an Ecotone Levee and Living Shoreline into the levee design. This nature based approach aims to meet regional and national climate change resiliency goals by mitigating the impact of coastal flooding and risk to key infrastructure while preserving the habitat functions and values of coastal marsh habitat through decades of sea level rise. The levee incorporates a stairstep design that allows for near-term enhancement of existing marsh while allowing for migration of low, mid, and high marsh habitats through currently modeled sea level rise scenarios. This project will contribute to the local integrity of San Francisco Bay’s shoreline ecology for the benefit of fish and wildlife for decades by incorporating long term monitoring and adaptive management plans.

Aesthetics and Ecological Restoration: A Novel Approach to Achieving Client Buy-in at the Site Scale

The core theories underlying the practice of ecological restoration are most applicable to landscape-scale restoration, and implementation techniques for smaller scales focus largely on conservation oriented projects and public lands. At the site scale, there are opportunities to adapt ecological restoration techniques to restore ecological function to small, privately owned properties so they can contribute to a positive way to their surrounding landscape. However, private landowners may be resistant to the “wild” or “messy” aesthetic of a true ecological planting design, given their familiarity with traditional ornamental landscapes. Client buy-in along with ecological integrity can be achieved by creating beautiful landscape designs based on analogues from surrounding reference ecosystems by following a simple process; a palette of plants is distilled from key species of plants found in the reference ecosystem, these plants are then arranged to complement the proposed buildings and paths, understory planting occurs at a high density with a variety of sizes of planting stock, and management after installation occurs to the point of plant establishment. Where possible, plants and other features (boulders, woody debris, soil) are salvaged and re-used. Project examples will be provided where these techniques were applied to residential development projects in the Muskoka Lakes region of Ontario, Canada where shorelines of freshwater lakes are densely populated with cottages interspersed within a largely natural landscape matrix of mixed forest. Without applying an aesthetic approach to restoration, client buy-in to the use of native plants and landscape analogues on these projects may not have been achieved.

Art as an Interface for Watershed System Resiliency

Art has shown increasing promise as a method of communicating the science and attendant need for watershed restoration work to both practitioners and the public. The study explores whether art can efficiently convey concepts of connectivity, capacity and resiliency as they relate to restoration in small socio-ecological watershed systems in southern Bruce County, Ontario, Canada and to larger hydrological systems in general. This research explores whether an exhibit of eco-art convey the message that restoring lateral hydrological connectivity and the potential for water storage capacity on the landscape can increase watershed resiliency? I first established the scientific validity for the central message of the eco art exhibit through a case study in the South Pine River in partnership with the Healthy Lake Huron monitoring project and Rural Stormwater Management Model. Increased water storage on the landscape corresponded to increased lateral hydrological connectivity measured as reduced Total Suspended Sediment loads (P value 0.05). I then combined this field based evidence with theories of Bernoulli’s law in hydrology and the Holling’s loop from resilience literature to prototype an eco-art exhibit. This exhibit was presented eight times to varied and multidisciplinary audiences and anonymous feedback was gathered. This eco-art exhibit showed potential to broaden uptake for the methodologies and motivators for restoring connectivity and capacity to increase watershed system resiliency. Hence, the use of art as alternative medium to central textual messaging may have potential to help bypass communication barriers encountered in ecological restoration.

Imagining Restoration Ecology: Ecological devastation and restoration in The Lord of the Rings

J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has captured the attention of readers for generations. To date, much of Tolkien scholarship has focused on Tolkien’s participation in literary and linguistic traditions; however, ecocritical perspectives on Tolkien’s work represent another important area of scholarship. Tolkien’s environmental vision in many ways was ahead of his time, anticipating the dramatic effects of modernism (and its associated industrialization) on the forests and grasslands of his beloved English countryside. Embedded within his prodigious imagination of the ecosystems of Middle-earth, Tolkien
powerfully imagines the power of humans both to destroy (e.g., through waging war, seeking power, and advancing industrialization) and to care for ecosystems. Tolkien’s environmental spaces thus present a perspective on ecological devastation and restoration in Middle-earth, with opportunities to re-imagine ecological restoration in the “real world.” This paper explores examples of ecological devastation and restoration in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, then highlights important implications for framing ecological restoration in practice. Overall, Tolkien’s work presents an opportunity for practitioners of restoration ecology to contextualize ecological devastation and restoration in a broader literary and imaginative framework, providing new pathways for diverse community members to connect with and, eventually, participate in ecological restoration in their own communities.

Integrating participatory scenarios into Rewilding strategies: A synthesis of nature futures under restoration narratives

As we enter the UN decade on Restoration, different political agendas such as the EU’s 2030 Biodiversity strategy are placing rewilding at the center of strategies for upscaling ecosystems restoration. Despite the popularity of this approach, we still lack research on the possible trade-offs and benefits that rewilding could bring to society. A way to approach these gaps is through Participatory Scenario Planning (PSP), an essential tool for incorporating stakeholders into restoration initiatives. We present a synthesis study of how the future of nature in Europe has been envisioned in ecosystem restoration narratives, and what elements of rewilding are being included in PSP. We mapped the information into different Nature Contributions to People (NCPs) and indicators for measuring rewilding progress. Our results indicate that NCPs such as lifestyle, culture, and provision of food were key for multiple stakeholders when envisioning nature futures in restoration areas. Nonetheless, key categories related to rewilding such as the recovery of large-bodied species, the restoration of natural disturbance regimes and increasing connectivity of ecosystems were barely considered. We conclude that PSP in Europe has been successful at incorporating NCPs in scenario narratives but it has overlooked key aspects of rewilding and its benefits and tradeoffs. Finally, we identify which advances, such as spatial explicit data and scenario modeling, that are required in participatory scenario frameworks in order to consolidate rewilding as a pragmatic restoration solution in socio-ecological systems.

Interactive Wetland Experience Center – Dialogue of Man-Nature relationship in 21st Century, A case of Najafgarh wetland, Delhi, India

Wetlands in India are one of the most important and the same time most threatened resources. With rapid urbanization and development initiatives in the country, these wetlands are further at threat to become a part of city core, resulting in nothing but a sewer system and habitat losses.

On the delhi part of what is known as the Basai wetlands , flowing through the paleochannel of Sahibi river, this wetland zone witnesses bird biodiversity perched on the edge of a globally significant biodiversity hotbed, it provides for the apt platform of restoration, research and edutainment activities, In a way positioning and provisioning itself as a model urban -environmental interface as a window to the melange of natural biodiversity.

One such case of Najafgarh/Basai wetlands in Delhi, India, has been taken up as a ecological landscape planning and design project. This presentation showcases a new concept of interactive ecology for Indian scenarios, where man and nature interact to support each other, enhance, restore and revive the natural set up, to sensitize the general public about the natural assets, their values and at the same time learn how to sensitively interact with it. The master planning proposal provides a campus for the city’s ecology, history and culture, offers co-existence which has always been the way of nature and opportunities for research as well as recreation through restoration.