Abstract
Author(s): Taddeo, Sophie; Dronova, Iryna | Abstract: Significant wetland losses and continuing threats to remnant habitats have motivated extensive restoration efforts in the San Francisco Bay–Delta estuary of California, the largest in the western United States. Consistent monitoring of ecological outcomes from this restoration effort would help managers learn from past projects to improve the design of future endeavors. However, budget constraints and challenging field conditions can limit the scope of current monitoring programs. Geospatial tools and remote sensing data sets could help complement field efforts for a low-cost, longer, and broader monitoring of wetland resources. To understand where geospatial tools could best complement current field monitoring practices, we reviewed the metrics and monitoring methods used by 42 wetland restoration projects implemented in the estuary. Monitoring strategies within our sample of monitoring plans relied predominantly on field surveys to assess key aspects of vegetation recovery while geospatial data sets were used sparingly. Drawing on recent publications that focus on the estuary and other wetland systems, we propose additional geospatial applications to help monitor the progress made toward site-specific and regional goals. These include the use of ecological niche models to target on-the-ground monitoring efforts, the up-scaling of field measurements into regional estimates using remote sensing data, and the analysis of time-series to detect ecosystem shifts. We discuss challenges and limitations to the broad-scale application of remote sensing data in wetland monitoring. These notably include the need to find a venue to store and share computationally intensive data sets, the often cumbersome pre-processing effort needed for long-term analyses, and multiple confounding factors that can obscure the signal of remote sensing data sets.
Highlights
Ecological restoration is increasingly used to address the substantial worldwide loss of wetland ecosystems and their ecological benefits (Davidson 2014)
We identified 42 wetland restoration projects with enough information to meet our filtering criteria
The spatio-temporal scope and performance metrics of this effort vary among projects, likely reflecting a diversity of goals and monitoring requirements as discussed in previous publications that focused on wetland restoration in California (e.g., Kimmerer et al 2005) and elsewhere (e.g., Matthews and Endress 2008)
Summary
Ecological restoration is increasingly used to address the substantial worldwide loss of wetland ecosystems and their ecological benefits (Davidson 2014). Wetland restoration efforts have intensified across the country (Deland 1992; NRC 2001). Evidence from previous scientific studies shows a substantial variability in post-restoration outcomes, even under similar approaches (Matthews and Spyreas 2010; Matthews 2015). A current lack of consistent long-term monitoring, as reported in previous publications, limits the availability of robust ecological information to help identify the site characteristics, restoration interventions, and landscape planning strategies that promote site recovery (Simenstad et al 2006; Matthews and Endress 2008; Suding 2011). There is increasing recognition that monitoring is key to detecting ecosystem stressors and promoting adaptive management, in sites exhibiting high spatial and temporal complexity (Perring et al 2015; Brudvig et al 2017)
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