Selecting indicators to monitor outcomes across projects and multiple restoration programs in the Gulf of Mexico

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Tracking the incremental and combined effects of large-scale ecosystem restoration programs is scientifically and socioeconomically challenging; this is especially true for ongoing management and restoration programs in the northern Gulf of Mexico and adjacent areas following the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. When implemented, monitoring programs for large-scale ecosystems typically monitor overall system health and/or the progress toward individual restoration project goals. However, being able to demonstrate successful “individual restoration projects” does not necessarily equate to providing cost-effective benefits at the large-scale ecosystem level, especially when the area and complexity of the system is large. More than $16billion is available for ecosystem restoration related activities associated with multiple Deepwater Horizon settlements (i.e., Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council, Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) Trustee Council, and National Fish and Wildlife Foundation). Restoration activities conducted under the NRDA settlement are intended to restore injured resources to conditions that would have existed in the absence of the spill and to compensate the public for lost use of injured resources. Other restoration activities funded by the settlements are designated to restore the Gulf Coast economy, culture and environmental health by addressing a multitude of other ecological and economic injuries in the Gulf ecosystem not directly caused by the spill. Although the collective funding for restoration activities is large, unprecedented, and has the potential to begin making progress toward reducing adverse long-term environmental stressors, it is insufficient to fully address all stressors to restore ecological health in the vast Gulf ecosystem. This creates a unique challenge for restoration program managers who in addition to demonstrating the success of individual projects, need to demonstrate that overall restoration funds were spent wisely and produced significant synergistic benefits to preserve and restore the Gulf ecosystem. This will be especially important as settlement funds are exhausted and resource managers seek public funding to continue restoration and conservation efforts.We evaluated approaches for integrating the monitoring of individual project outcomes in order to also monitor the combined program progress across all Gulf oil disaster restoration programs based on (1) lessons learned from other large-scale restoration programs; (2) integrated restoration goals and objectives from multiple Gulf restoration programs; (3) common stressors, and potential interactions with varying restoration and conservation target categories and their associated types of projects; and (4) the applicability of monitoring at both the project and program level. We identified a suite of 10 performance metrics or indicators that are applicable to multiple project types and restoration entities in the Gulf using restoration indicators that are highly applicable across restoration categories at both the project and system level. Utilizing a small set of indicators that can be measured across multiple resource and project types creates an opportunity to build a core set of metrics into individual project monitoring plans in a way that is cost-effective, efficient and consistent. Our approach represents one way to track the impacts of restoration activities at a scale larger than the project level in the Gulf, while recognizing the scientific, political and economic challenges associated with restoring the Gulf ecosystem in the wake of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.