Restoration Ecology

In addition to understanding ecosystem function in structured habitats, one area of research has been on restoration of these systems. In the Columbia River estuary, Kathryn participated in projects assessing large-scale restoration efforts by analyzing plant succession and the development of faunal communities.

While restoration can lead to improved ecosystem function, there may be unintended consequences of restoration actions. For one integrated study, our team of hydrodynamic modelers and ecologists assessed multiple restoration scenarios for restoring a coastal wetland in Port Susan Bay, Puget Sound (Yang et al. 2010). Our study showed that subsidence from diking and agriculture lowered the marsh surface beyond where native plants would be successful, resulting in pond rather than marsh habitat—this structural difference has ecological and management consequences for fish and wildlife species. Aspects of this restoration are ongoing and we hope to conduct an assessment of how well we predicted the habitat types.

This type of model-based scenario testing can be valuable for assessing restoration outcomes. Additionally, the interdisciplinary research team was essential for the project and yielded a more developed assessment of the research questions.