Monitoring and Adaptive Management Document and Implementation Plans
The Louisiana Coastwide Fish and Shellfish Monitoring Program includes two types of monitoring activities: (1) monitoring which is a portion of the coastwide fisheries-independent monitoring program (FIMP) conducted by Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF), and (2) monitoring which includes several pilot projects that will collect data for better quantification of fish and shellfish relative abundances and densities, species composition and community/food web interactions, and habitat use within the coastal basin.
The coastwide Fishery Independent Monitoring Program (FIMP) provides valuable data for the nearshore habitats and resources targeted for NRDA restoration, including oysters, nekton, and prey resources (e.g., shrimps, crab, fishes) for threatened and/or endangered species such as the gulf sturgeon, sea turtles, and marine mammals. The LA TIG can use the data provided by the coastwide FIMP to assess changes in the fish, shellfish and their associated habitats (physical habitat with accompanying environmental data) in the basins over time, allowing for assessment of the influence of the comprehensive, integrated portfolio of restoration projects at a coastwide or regional-scale within the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) and relative to other drivers and long-term trends in the basins.
The project will develop a plan to improve understanding of food web foundation through inventory and assessment of the lower trophic levels of the Barataria estuary.
Lower trophic level (LTL) organisms include phytoplankton and animals such as zooplankton, worms, and small clams. They form the base of the estuarine food web and are an especially important food source for juvenile fish that live in the estuary. Additionally, they help to break down detritus, oxygenate sediments, and maintain healthy levels of nutrients in sediments. The organisms that live in the sediment also serve as excellent biological indicators of environmental conditions, including ecological recovery and ongoing impacts of buried Deepwater Horizon oil.
This project conducted vessel-based photo-identification surveys for abundance, distribution, density, and survival of marine mammals in Barataria Bay, Louisiana. This effort supports the understanding of baseline population conditions that will be used to evaluate the effects of implementing Deepwater Horizon Natural Resource Damage Assessment and other restoration projects.
This Monitoring and Adaptive Management (MAM) Activities Implementation Plan (MAIP) describes the MAM activity, “Louisiana Barrier Island Comprehensive Monitoring (BICM) Program (2022-2027)” to address restoration assessment priorities described in the Programmatic Damage Assessment and Restoration Plan and Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PDARP/PEIS). This MAM activity is intended to support the evaluation of regional restoration outcomes within the Louisiana Restoration Area; perform data aggregation and data management; resolve critical information gaps and uncertainties for restoration planning, inform restoration decision-making; and perform monitoring to inform the design and implementation of future restoration projects.
Louisiana Barrier Island Comprehensive Montioring Program (BICM)
The activity will determine historic trends of wetland area and habitat type change from 1985 through the present using satellite imagery for the Louisiana coastal zone. The activity will also quantify the relationships between vegetation community type and physical characteristics within each habitat type. Ultimately this information will be used to inform project planning and support the evaluation of restoration outcomes within the Louisiana Restoration Area.
Quantifying Changes in Wetland Area and Habitat Types with Remote Sensing
The activity will characterize the resistance/resilience of Louisiana barriers based on a synthesis of geomorphic state literature and an assessment of available data while engaging with a technical advisory group (TAG) established by the Monitoring and Adaptive Management (MAM) activity. In coordination with the TAG, new derivative datasets may be developed if applicable to support the evaluation of restoration outcomes within the Louisiana Restoration Area
The objective of this Monitoring and Adaptive Management (MAM) Activity Implementation Plan (MAIP) is to develop and implement a practical, tangible, and easily accessible, interactive lessons learned database from Louisiana Trustee Implementation Group (LA TIG) restoration projects, and document rationale for operation and maintenance decisions to inform future planning and objective setting. This database will capture LA TIG restoration lessons learned, where they can be accessed by project planners, implementers, and contractors. It will also evaluate former projects conducted under other programs, as needed, to apply lessons learned to Deepwater Horizon (DWH) Natural Resources Damage Assessment (NRDA) restoration planning and implementation. It will include relevant historical lessons learned from project reports and documents, develop dynamic ways to access and search that information, and provide a repository for new lessons learned to be captured during current and future ecosystem restoration projects as well as programmatic scale ecosystem restoration planning.
The interactive lessons learned database will support the most fundamental component of Adaptive Management – improving future restoration outcomes based upon lessons learned during previous projects/programs. It will identify and track critical knowledge gaps and data needs, so that project teams can track updates and new knowledge related to known uncertainties. It will be intuitive and simple to use, with minimal (or no) training or explanation needed for successful use, and controlled vocabulary (such as pull-down menus) to assist with effective searching. An electronic platform and structure will be developed which will be a ‘living database’ that is dynamic so that it can be added to during the restoration project reporting cycle and evolve over time to best address changing MAM needs while using up-to-date technology.
Barrier Island System Management (BISM) program enables barrier island projects to be integrated components of a long-term, system-wide restoration strategy that actively incorporates Adaptive Management (AM). The BISM program also facilitates implementation of components of a holistic Louisiana Sediment Management Plan (LASMP) that supports increased restoration project longevity leading to a more sustainable barrier island system. In addition, adoption of Adaptive Management (AM) principles minimizes costs, maximizes benefits, while achieving barrier island restoration targets.
This Monitoring and Adaptive Management (MAM) activity addresses multiple fundamental objectives identified within the Louisiana Trustee Implementation Group (LA TIG) Programmatic MAM Strategy and is intended to:
- support evaluation of regional restoration outcomes for barrier island restoration within the Louisiana Restoration Area through data aggregation and analysis;
- identify and reduce critical information gaps related to the placement of sediment within the Wetland Coastal and Nearshore Habitat (WCNH) system; and inform and improve the impact of barrier island restoration activities.
This program also includes all three Fundamental Objectives established for barrier islands in the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) Programmatic Damage Assessment and Restoration Plan (PDARP). The objectives are to maintain protective function (wave attenuation) of barrier islands; support natural processes of barrier island evolution through barrier island restoration projects; and maintain habitat heterogeneity to support resilient nearshore and coastal ecosystems. This effort will specifically advance development of the Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timely (SMART) Objectives associated with these Fundamental Objectives, identified as a need within the Programmatic MAM Strategy.
In addition, as a programmatic and adaptive management approach to barrier island management, BISM advances a Fundamental Objective to maximize the combined benefits of the various Restoration Types and approaches across the overall restoration portfolio (PDARP Section 5.5.1); and to evaluate the efficacy of various strategies in land creation/restoration (diversions, marsh platform creations, barrier island restoration, ridge restoration).
The project will meet high-level oyster SMART objectives by providing output that will enable the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) to evaluate locations for oyster cultch plants and brood stock reefs. Generally, the model will enable managers to assess the impacts of enhanced or restored reef location on recruitment to other existing (or proposed) reefs, larval survival, and growth of oysters on existing and proposed reefs, and reef connectivity. This model will enable management of oysters to move from individual reef level to assessment of a network, or meta-population, of reefs under current and future predicted conditions.
Modeling to Inform Sustainable Oyster Populations in Louisiana Estuaries
This project will develop a detailed plan to determine bottlenose dolphin abundance, distribution, and stock structure as well as habitat use in Louisiana, with an emphasis on foraging and prey. It will also develop a plan for quantifying and better characterizing freshwater exposure and effects on bottlenose dolphins in coastal Louisiana. It will also synthesize existing information to better and more fully characterize individually and cumulatively direct human caused threats (e.g., fishery bycatch, illegal feeding, gunshots, entrapment, marine debris, etc.), and other threats such as environmental contaminants and disease, and develop a common framework for assessing risk to bottlenose dolphins in coastal Louisiana. This project will inform future efforts to decrease the impacts of these threats to bottlenose dolphins, and will allow for comparisons between stocks to improve our threat assessments and population trend analyses for restoration planning as well as monitoring restoration effectiveness.
Monitoring Approaches for Bottlenose Dolphin Restoration in Louisiana
This targeted data collection and analysis project will include two years of field work in Chandeleur Sound and Lake Borgne, Louisiana and one year of data analysis, focused primarily on loggerhead, Kemp’s ridley, and green sea turtles. The goal of this Monitoring and Adaptive Management (MAM) activity is to provide updated information on sea turtle habitat use and abundance in eastern LA waters to inform restoration planning and restoration evaluation in the LA Restoration Area. The objectives are to document sea turtle distribution and habitat use in Louisiana; to understand how and where important habitats overlap with known threats; and to inform the development of MAM Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timely (SMART) objectives for sea turtles. This work will directly benefit the Trustees’ ability to effectively restore sea turtles in LA waters and to inform and evaluate the success of future sea turtle restoration efforts.
Sea Turtle Habitat Use and Abundance in Eastern Louisiana Waters
This project will collect and analyze data to establish reference ranges and restoration targets and to assess data gaps for fish and invertebrates associated with Louisiana’s estuarine and coastal habitats. This MAM activity is intended to support the evaluation of regional outcomes within the Louisiana Restoration Area; perform data aggregation and data management; resolve critical information gaps and uncertainties for restoration planning, inform restoration decision-making; and perform monitoring to inform the design and implementation of future restoration projects.
Monitoring the Effects of Coastal Wetland Restoration on Fish
The Louisiana Trustee Implementation Group (LA TIG) Monitoring and Adaptive Management (MAM) Strategy outlines an approach for the LA TIG to prioritize MAM activities in Louisiana for effective and efficient evaluation of the restoration of resources injured by the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill. Working from the Restoration Goals and Restoration Approaches outlined in the Programmatic Damage Assessment and Restoration Plan (PDARP), the LA TIG developed a framework of Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, appropriate Timeline (SMART) Objectives to assess progress towards attaining PDARP Restoration Goals. In addition to detailing MAM needs, the Strategy describes the LA TIG process for screening and approval of DWH Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) LA TIG MAM activities, outlining a process to ensure transparency and maximize ecosystem benefits.
The Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) is implementing a suite of avian monitoring protocols to: (1) establish the current population of avian species as a means to document inherent avian benefits generated by Deepwater Horizon (DWH) restoration projects; and (2) evaluate project performance criteria and potentially implementing adaptive management measures, as needed. Information generated from these monitoring efforts will be critical in documenting resource uplift (e.g., number of nesting pairs) from DWH bird restoration projects. This information will provide a rigorous, data-driven means to assess project design and success in an adaptive manner and assist in future DWH project selection for birds, other living coastal and marine resources, and habitats.
This MAM Activities Implementation Plan (MAIP) describes the MAM activity, “Fisheries-Independent Monitoring Program” to address restoration priorities described in the PDARP/PEIS. This MAM activity is intended to support evaluation of regional restoration outcomes within the Louisiana Restoration Area; perform data aggregation and data management; resolve critical information gaps and uncertainties for restoration planning, inform restoration decision-making; and perform monitoring to inform the design and implementation of future restoration projects.
