Developing and Integrating Social Measures of Estuarine Restoration Success - NERRS/NSC(NERRS Science Collaborative)

Understanding why estuarine habitat restoration is viewed as successful or not is critical for evaluating completed projects and garnering support for future projects. Particularly important, and often overlooked, are the perceptions of partners and the surrounding community which play an integral role in shaping the future of coastal habitats. Restoration metrics rarely include human dimensions even though community support for restoration can promote or thwart potential projects and the long-term success of completed projects. Working with the South Slough NERR, this catalyst project worked to more fully account for and understand the impacts of estuarine habitat restoration by developing social metrics for restoration success and linking them to ecological monitoring metrics.

Using South Slough NERR, The Wetlands Conservancy, and other restoration projects in Oregon as case studies, the project involved a two-pronged approach to data collection: 1) synthesis of existing and newly collected ecological data from nine salt marsh restoration projects to derive commonly used ecological metrics and 2) focus groups in three Oregon locations (South Slough, Alsea, and Yaquina) to understand public perceptions about marshes. The team then connected the social and ecological datasets conceptually to create a matrix linking the datasets and indicating mismatches between ecological data and social values. Based on these steps, the team was able to provide recommendations to help improve restoration design and implementation, including more inclusive and effective communications surrounding estuarine restoration.