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Using goals to guide restoration design and report effectiveness
Citation:
SUMNER, R. R. AND J. Collins. Using goals to guide restoration design and report effectiveness. Presented at National Conference on Ecosystem Restoration, Los Angeles, CA, July 20 - 24, 2009.
Impact/Purpose:
Public investments in ecosystem restoration and the number of projects continue to grow across the Western US.
Description:
Public investments in ecosystem restoration and the number of projects continue to grow across the Western US. The stress on ecosystems likewise continues to increase, due to land use and climate change. As a result, restoration practitioners may not be able to keep pace with the rate of landscape degradation. Looking at the problem from the ground up reveals a basic fact: Project-by-project environmental review leaves too little time and money for regulatory, conservation and development communities to adequately plan and assess land and water use. Monitoring is generally inadequate to reveal problems or trigger corrective actions. Looking down from the landscape level reveals a path toward problem reconciliation: a scaling-up of project design. The design of multi-scale projects is achieved through adoption of explicit watershed goals. Landscape ecology and information technology have matured together as a powerful toolkit for watershed analysis and goal setting. Conceptually, the conservation of natural processes is the ecological foundation of restoration planning, implementation and the evaluation of project success. Those processes, such as flowing water, produce physical structure within the environment. The structure helps to support life. Life is sustained because the flow of water and materials through the structure is not impeded beyond levels to which life has become accustomed. A geographical information system (GIS) is used to depict alternative landscape designs that conserve the natural structure of a watershed. A preferred design can then be translated into a set of community-based watershed goals. The adopted goals guide restoration projects and allow for the reporting of restoration effectiveness with a known level of certainty. Wetland restoration is a good example of how project scale can be increased using watershed goals. A wetland goals project is initiated using the relatively simple approach of generating wetland landscape profiles. The theory behind wetland landscape profiles is that the abundance, distribution and condition of wetlands in the landscape control the delivery of ecosystem services. Those services include the provisioning of habitat, flood control and water quality. GIS is used to characterize profiles and display restoration opportunity. The resulting information informs the articulation of goal options. Once goals are established, restoration and mitigation decisions are made in way that helps sustain or improve an area’s wetland landscape profile. Relationships between the landscape profiles and the provisioning of ecosystem services are built over time with a monitoring and assessment program.