Assessing Ecological and Physical Performance of Sustainable Shoreline Structure - NERRS/NSC(NERRS Science Collaborative)

From 2010 to 2018, the National Estuarine Research Reserve System’s Science Collaborative supported the Hudson River Sustainable Shorelines Project, which engages a regional research team to quantify the ecological functions and physical stresses on the full range of Hudson River, New York shorelines. This research is the basis for development of information and tools to identify the best settings and approaches for sustainable shoreline protection in the Hudson River Estuary. Work has included the establishment of a sustainable shoreline demonstration network of seven sites with varying modes of construction distributed along the Hudson. The most recent project-- the focus of this InPort entry-- expanded that effort by working closely with regulators, engineers, and land managers to 1) develop and field-validate a rapid assessment protocol manual for physical and ecological functions of ecologically enhanced shorelines and 2) train local land managers in the protocols. This work helps to solidify confidence in the suitability of novel shoreline techniques in the Hudson River Estuary and has enabled local managers to track performance into the future. The project also produced a dataset comprised of a suite of measures of ecological and physical functions of built sustainable shorelines along the Hudson River.