website is part of Maggie Allio's research project
Seminar 2005. The purpose was to analyze a number of case
studies of salt marsh restoration projects,
including those funded by the Breaux
Act in Louisiana. Links in blue
are internal, linking to other pages of my site. Links
in red are external and link to outside sites containing additional
**This page is
best viewed with Internet Explorer 6.0 or better on a PC computer.**
A comparison of global case studies was conducted (see
table for results), focusing on the monitoring strategies and
the effect adaptive management has
on the functional success of restortaion projects.
also hope to help students of the Luce Semester to be able to see
the Breaux Act in a global context. such as the coastal wetlands
in southern Louisiana.
I asked a
series of questions for each case study in order to objectively analyze
and compare the different studies from around the world. This analysis
was done to study some of the major challenges in the field
of salt marsh restoration and highlight successful strategies to enhance
degraded coastal landscapes.
Questions I used to analyze each case study
1. What type of wetland? Restoration efforts are likely to
vary depending on the type of wetland being restored. This question was asked
in hopes of identifying whether the difficulty of successful restoration tended
to change depending on salinity, habitat, or vegetation composition.
2. Where and when did the study take place? It is
important to note the cultural differences that are likely to occur
between studies in
different countries. The currency of the study is also important because
the understanding of ecological restoration has been developing rapidly.
3. Who funded the restoration project and monitoring? This
question is asked to determine if funding tends to have any effect on the success
of salt marsh restoration projects and the monitoring efforts. If so, this
is an interesting perspective to apply to the case study of Louisiana.
4. How is the public involved in the restoration project? This
question was asked so that any indication of public involvement would be noted
for each case study in order to see if public participation improved the likelihood
for success in salt marsh restoration projects.
5. How adaptive/flexible is the monitoring plan? “Adaptive
management is a “buzzword” in the literature, but how is it being
applied to real restoration projects? These strategies can be used to achieve
the functional success of salt marsh restoration.
6. What were the greatest successes and failures of the project? It
is valuable to compare stories of success and failure in order to gain a better
understanding of the current state of the development of restoration projects.
Articulating answers to this question will help highlight the greatest issues
and challenges in the field of salt marsh restoration.
7. Who is responsible for implementing the monitoring plan,
and how long will it continue? Adaptive management can not
take place without the accountability of project managers to implement
monitoring plans that continue
for an extended period of time. This question was asked in order to understand
how monitoring plans are being implemented.
8. What is the assessment strategy? In addition to the structure
of the monitoring plan, it is important to note the ecological indicators being
used to evaluate restoration projects, and what they are being compared to.
Although, this was the original focus of the project, my research shifted to
analyzing the organization and vision of the monitoring plans.
9. What conclusions are drawn? The comparisons of conclusions
will help frame the most important issues in the field of salt marsh restoration.
Recommendations from each study will be compared and contrasted.
10. How does this study compare to salt marsh restoration projects
in Louisiana? This question was asked in order to highlight the conclusions
or some details of each study that may be more easily compared to those funded
by the Breaux Act.