Management and Restoration

The scientists at the Wetland and Aquatic Science Center (WARC) have provided coastal restoration project managers and decision makers with GIS planning, database and custom application capacity since 1992. The scope and complexity of this support has increased over the years and has resulted in the development of a comprehensive geospatial and advanced application teams that provide decision...

WARC first implemented geographic information systems (GIS) in 1980 to help monitor the nature and extent of wetland habitat changes. The center continues to use GIS, remote sensing, and other computer based technologies to address a wide range of natural resource related issues.

Quality photographs of plant species are rare on the internet, often difficult to find, and are generally copyrighted, preventing them from being used by government agencies and non-government organizations, academics and the general public.

Deep-sea coral habitats are complex ecosystems at the landscape and local level. While these systems may harbor substantial levels of biodiversity, they remain inadequately investigated.

Wetland restoration and creation efforts are increasingly proposed as means to compensate for wetland losses. To address the need for evaluating the development of ecosystem structure and function in restored and created wetlands, USGS compared created tidal wetlands sites to natural mangrove wetlands in Tampa Bay, Florida.

In support of Louisiana’s 2012 Coastal Master Plan, USGS WARC scientists have developed a spatially explicit wetland morphology model and coupled it with other predictive models to help predict the effects of protection and restoration projects.

USGS WARC first implemented geographic information systems (GIS) in 1980 to assist in monitoring the nature and extent of wetland habitat changes. Today, geographers and support staff create, maintain, and use geospatial data to analyze restoration efforts in Louisiana.

Adaptive management (AM) is an iterative science-based process that accepts uncertainties in ecological systems and uses best available science and technology such as research, modeling, experimentation, monitoring and evaluation to address uncertainties.

WaterSMART (Sustain and Manage America’s Resources for Tomorrow) is a program of the Department of the Interior that focuses on improving water conservation and helping water-resource managers make sound decisions about water use.

Hydrologic restoration is one of several approaches to rehabilitate mangroves on a large-scale. USGS evaluates how solely restoring tidal hydrologic flows affect the recovery of mangroves in Florida.

Wetlands have the potential to absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide via photosynthesis, and flooded soils have low oxygen levels which decrease rates of decomposition to promote the retention of soil carbon. However, the type of greenhouse gases emitted from wetlands varies by wetland type and soil condition. A suite of approaches are being used to assess fluxes of greenhouses gases, like...

USGS investigates the eco-physiological responses of coastal forested wetland vegetation to envrionmental stressors, and what role vegetation may have in affecting local hydrological cycling as a result of these stressors.