Use of Remote Sensing and Field Data to Quantify the Performance and Resilience of Restored Louisiana Wetlands
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WETLANDS RESTORATION
Use of Remote Sensing and Field Data to Quantify the Performance and Resilience of Restored Louisiana Wetlands Glenn M. Suir 1
&
Charles E. Sasser 2 & John M. Harris 3
Received: 25 November 2019 / Accepted: 22 July 2020 # US Government 2020
Abstract Typical goals of wetland restoration efforts are to conserve, create, or enhance wetland structure, and to achieve wetland function that approaches or exceeds natural conditions. Measuring wetland establishment, condition, and resilience can be difficult, especially because monitoring wetland function has traditionally been time-intensive, costly, and often required repeat fieldbased surveys. Remote sensing provides novel collections of data and facilitates rapid assessments of wetland landscapes, land cover, species/habitat composition, change detection, degradation, diversity, as well as system threats and pressures. A combination of remotely collected and in situ vegetation data were used in conjunction with landscape metrics and vegetative indices. These data were used to evaluate and compare changes and trends in condition, function and resilience of restoration sites and reference wetlands in southwest Louisiana, USA. Results of this work show the restored wetlands reached structural and functional equivalency to reference wetlands after approximately three to ten years post-construction. With adequate maturity, the restored wetlands outperformed the reference wetlands, having higher percentage of land, land aggregation, aboveground vegetation productivity and floristic quality. Supplementing traditional field-based methods with remote sensing applications provided enhanced metrics for inventorying and monitoring of wetland resources, forecasting of resource condition and stability, and adaptive management strategies. Keywords Ecosystem restoration . Remote sensing . Goods and services . Wetland function . Landscape ecology
Introduction Wetlands are among the most productive and beneficial ecosystems in the world. Wetlands provide a wide range of services, including regulation (i.e., floods and droughts), support (i.e., soil formation and nutrient cycling), provisions (i.e., food and fresh water); cultural (i.e., recreational and aesthetics), and ecosystem (i.e., biological productivity and critical habitat)
* Glenn M. Suir [email protected] 1
U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, Environmental Laboratory, Wetlands and Environmental Technologies Research Facility, ATTN: CEERD-EE-C, 3909 Halls Ferry Road, Vicksburg, MS 39180-6199, USA
2
Department of Oceanography and Coastal Science, College of the Coast and Environment, Louisiana State University, Energy Coast and Environment Building, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA
3
Department of Biology, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA 70504, USA
(Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2003; United States Army Corps of Engineers [USACE] 2013). With an increasing understanding of wetland importance, Federal and State governments in the USA enacted various policie
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