Volunteers monitor an oyster restoration project in Yaquina Bay, Oregon. Photo credit: NOAA School children test water quality during pre-implementation monitoring on a tributary to San Francisco Bay, California. Photo credit: NOAA

Every year hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on habitat restoration projects in the United States in an effort to restore these important national resources (CEQ 2006). To ensure that money, time, and effort are being efficiently and effectively spent, it is important to monitor and assess these expenditures.

Restoration monitoring is:

"The systematic collection and analysis of data that provides information useful for measuring project performance at a variety of scales (locally, regionally, and nationally), determining when modification of efforts are necessary, and building long-term public support for habitat protection and restoration ." (Thayer et al. 2003)

Successful monitoring can prevent many problems associated with restoration projects. Restoration monitoring can:

• Provide early warning signals - Without effective monitoring, it may be impossible to obtain early warnings that a restoration project is not on track and therefore implement adaptive measures. Monitoring makes it possible to gauge how well a restoration site is functioning ecologically, before and after completion.
• Improve ongoing project coordination - Lack of monitoring may lead to poor project coordination. Unless multiple projects in the same watershed or ecosystem are evaluated using a complementary set of protocols, a disjointed effort may produce a patchwork of restoration sites with varying degrees of success (Galatowitsch et al. 1998) and little means of comparing results or approaches among projects.
• Enhance future planning - Monitoring is necessary for assessing whether specific project goals and objectives (both ecological and human dimensions) are being met, and for determining necessary measures to better achieve those goals.

The thousands of miles of U.S. coastline include diverse habitats, ranging from tropical coral reefs to temperate freshwater marshland to rocky Arctic shores. Even with the diversity and extreme geographic range of habitats that may need restoration, consistent principles and approaches form a common basis for meaningful restoration monitoring (Botkin et al. 2000, Collins 2003).

1) Pre-implementation monitoring. Although restoration monitoring is typically considered a post-restoration activity, practitioners find it beneficial to collect some data before and during project implementation. Pre-implementation monitoring provides baseline information to compare with post-implementation data to determine whether the restoration is having the desired effect. It also allows practitioners to refine sampling procedures if necessary.

2) Implementation monitoring. All habitat restoration projects should include implementation monitoring. Performed during and immediately after restoration activities, implementation monitoring ensures the project is being implemented as planned and identifies needed modifications. This basic monitoring involves collecting information such as area of vegetative cover, number of trees planted, elevation profile of stream modifications, and observations on aquatic life. This level of monitoring and data collection can often be performed by trained volunteers.

3) Effectiveness monitoring. This monitoring enables restoration practitioners to evaluate whether a specific project has met its objectives. Effectiveness monitoring is of longer duration, and perhaps greater intensity, than implementation monitoring, and data collection may involve more specialized methods and equipment.

4) Validation monitoring. This monitoring allows restoration practitioners to determine whether long-term restoration goals are being achieved. Validation monitoring is usually done on a watershed or regional basis, rather than an individual project-level basis.

Whenever possible, monitoring protocols should be determined before the first shovel strikes the ground and before any measurements are taken in the field. Many community-based restoration projects develop monitoring plans that fall somewhere between implementation monitoring and effectiveness monitoring. Depending on the complexity of the project, various questions about sampling techniques may need to be answered, including:

• How frequently and for how long is monitoring needed to measure progress toward the goals and objectives set for the project?
• Who will conduct the monitoring?
• What types of functional characteristics, such as presence or absence of fish, will be considered?
• What structural characteristics, such as water level fluctuation or shoreline elevation, will also be monitored and how?
• Who is responsible for housing and analyzing the data?
• How will results of the monitoring be disseminated?
• How will results be interpreted?

The key to monitoring is to have a plan and follow it through. Habitat-specific monitoring information is provided in each habitat section of this Restoration Portal. In addition, if you are new to monitoring, you might want to contact a local biologist and consider using established monitoring protocols. Here are a few tools and suggestions to help you get started:

• Restoration Monitoring Planner
• Science-Based Restoration Monitoring of Coastal Habitats (Thayer et al. 2003, 2005)
• Contact your state and local natural resource agencies

References Cited