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Coastal Systems: A Pre-Vegetated Mat Technique for the Restoration of Submersed Aquatic Vegetation

Ecological Restoration, Vol. 21, No. 2, 2003 ISSN 1522-4740 E-ISSN 1543-4079 ©2003 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. Communities of submersed aquatic vegetation (SAV) provide critical habitat for wintering waterfowl and many commercially important fish species. Submersed aquatic vegetation also helps minimize storm damage by reducing wave action and stabilizing sediments, and they improve water quality by sequestering nutrients and contaminants (Zieman and Zieman 1989). Scientists have documented significant losses to SAV populations throughout the coastal waters of Chesapeake Bay (Orth and Moore 1981), the Gulf of Mexico (Turner and others 1980, Lewis and others 1985, Eleuterius 1987, Livingston 1987, Stout 1990, Pulich and White 1991), and in San Francisco Bay (Kitting and Wyllie-Echeverria 1992). Tremendous fluctuations in SAV biomass and species composition have also been observed in coastal North Carolina (Davis and Brinson 1983) and in the tidal Potomac River (Rybicki and Carter 1986). Submersed aquatic vegetation communities within the southwestern Louisiana chenier plain, for example, have fluctuated widely over twoto three-year periods (P. Yakupzack, personal communication). Since these SAV communities are ecologically and commercially important, and their natural revegetation process is slow and haphazard, it is becoming increasingly necessary to have an effective, rapid, and inexpensive means of restoring SAV-impoverished coastal areas. Fonseca and his collegues (1998) point out that although many attempts have been made to reestablish SAV by numerous methods (plugs, staples, peat pots, plastic pots, sods, wire mesh, iron rods, seeds, and winter buds), there has been very little documented success. They determined that SAV restoration projects have often failed as a result of poor selection of planting sites or plant material and incorrect use of planting methods. Differences in methodology and insufficient follow-up monitoring of the plantings have made it difficult to resolve problems associated with these SAV restoration efforts. Subsequently, there have been very few reported seagrass restoration projects that have created enough acreage to achieve the desired goal of 1:1 habitat replacement (Fonseca 1994). A primary problem in restoration is the physical destruction of the plants by waves and currents before they can become established. Fonseca (1994) noted that up to 50 percent of a planting might be lost to wave action alone and the rate of planting failures increases as wave energy increases. As early as 1980, Phillips (1980) developed wave and current energy threshold criteria to help qualify restoration sites for seagrass plantings. These criteria have since been challenged, and researchers now strongly suggest that these thresholds need to be even lower for SAV survival and growth A Pre-Vegetated Mat Technique for the Restoration of Submersed Aquatic Vegetation