Developing success criteria for restored eelgrass, salt marsh and mud flathabitats

When estuarine habitats are restored, it is crucial to determine their succ ess or failure. How can we tell, bringing a minimum of preconceived notions to the task and using a valid scientific process, if the functions and val ues of habitats have been recreated and returned to the estuary? In the New Hampshire Port Mitigation Project (1993-1995), we formulated literature-ba sed success criteria (SC), but could not quantitatively defend their scient ific validity. We are now using the project as a laboratory for developing and testing rigorous SC. We developed indicators of chosen habitat function s, then created statistical representations of natural, local reference sit es for comparison to the functional development of restored habitats. An ex planation of the steps in developing and testing the method are followed by a test application of our SC methodology using the data from eelgrass tran splant sites (6.2 acres) created for the New Hampshire Port Mitigation Proj ect. At the same time, we are developing a methodology for a more generic m odel of SC that we are applying to the restorations of salt marsh and mud f lat for the Port Mitigation. We believe the methodology to develop and appl y SC is transferable to other locations and habitats not only because of it s objective foundation but because it is based on data collected locally. ( C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.