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The Habitat Restoration Group

A division of the Benthic Lab at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories

Our Mission:

To use ecological principles and applied science to restore freshwater ecosystems.

What we do:

Freshwater ecosystems are among the most threatened in the United States. This is particularly true in California where over 80% of wetlands have been lost in the last 100 years, primarily to agriculture and development. In the Salinas Valley freshwater ecosystems are critical habitat to an array of endangered plant and animal species and provide essential services such as water quality, flood attenuation, and groundwater recharge. We are dedicated to the restoration and protection of these critical ecosystems.

The Habitat Restoration Group restores, studies, and assesses freshwater systems primarily within Central California. We are currently directing two major restoration projects within the Salinas Valley, one in the Moro Cojo and one in the Gabilan Watershed. Both of these watersheds are primarily agricultural and face similar water quality and habitat loss issues. We collaborate with landowners and local and state agencies to prioritize restoration sites within these watersheds.

The design and construction phase of restoration involves collecting extensive information about the ecology, hydrology, and biology of the sites and setting design criteria and creating goals to improve ecological integrity and water quality. We conduct condition assessments of the sites which involve water quality testing, flora and fauna surveys, and threatened and endangered species monitoring. These assessments are used as current baselines that allow us to track progress towards reaching our goals. Final designs must integrate the concerns of permitting agencies as well as landowners and neighbors. Construction involves landform and hydrologic modification, weed control, and native plant installation. We maintain nurseries and work with local groups to grow native plants for planting in our restoration efforts. All of the restoration projects have a strong monitoring component which provides feedback to improve and refocus our management.

Our research focuses on understanding the relationships between freshwater systems, land use, and specific water quality and habitat loss issues faced in the Salinas Valley. We collaborate with scientists from California State University Monterey Bay, University of California at Davis, Coastal Conservation and Research, and the Coastal Commission to investigate questions that increase our understanding of these ecosystems and provide guidance for future work. On going research includes tracking bird populations relative to changes in management of wetlands and measuring nutrient and pesticide concentrations in agricultural tailwater as it moves through natural and constructed wetlands. Beyond simply monitoring we are also interested in the mechanisms that cause variation in nutrients and pollutants as they pass through wetlands.

We are working with state agencies to develop and modify tools to measure and track trends in wetland habitats both at the local and state level. We are a primary partner in the development of the California Rapid Assessment Method (CRAM), a protocol that assesses the condition of wetlands using a suite of biological, hydrological, and physical parameters. Future work with CRAM will involve developing training materials, training workshops and regional wetland assessments. We are also working on the development of the Central Coast Wetland Tracker which documents wetland restoration and mitigsation projects throughout Central California. Together, these projects provide a method to monitor wetlands throughout the region as well as gauge the success of restoration projects over time.