Oyster reef restoration fails to recoup global historic ecosystem losses despite substantial biodiversity gain.

Human activities have led to degradation of ecosystems globally. The lost ecosystem functions and services accumulate from the time of disturbance to the full recovery of the ecosystem and can be quantified as a "recovery debt," providing a valuable tool to develop better restoration practices that accelerate recovery and limit losses. Here, we quantified the recovery of faunal biodiversity and abundance toward a predisturbed state following structural restoration of oyster habitats globally.

Turning a lost reef ecosystem into a national restoration program.

Achieving a sustainable socioecological future now requires large-scale environmental repair across legislative borders. Yet, enabling large-scale conservation is complicated by policy-making processes that are disconnected from socioeconomic interests, multiple sources of knowledge, and differing applications of policy. We considered how a multidisciplinary approach to marine habitat restoration generated the scientific evidence base, community support, and funding needed to begin the restoration of a forgotten, functionally extinct shellfish reef ecosystem.

Evaluating connections between nitrogen cycling and the macrofauna in native oyster beds in a New England estuary.

Recent efforts to quantify biogeochemical and ecological processes in oyster habitats have focused on provision of habitat and regulation of the nitrogen cycle. However, it is unclear how these two processes may interact. In this study, seasonal patterns of habitat use and nitrogen removal from natural oyster beds were quantified for comparison with nearby bare sediment in Green Hill Pond, a temperate coastal lagoon in Rhode Island USA.

Coral reefs for coastal protection: A new methodological approach and engineering case study in Grenada.

Coastal communities in tropical environments are at increasing risk from both environmental degradation and climate change and require urgent local adaptation action. Evidences show coral reefs play a critical role in wave attenuation but relatively little direct connection has been drawn between these effects and impacts on shorelines. Reefs are rarely assessed for their coastal protection service and thus not managed for their infrastructure benefits, while widespread damage and degradation continues.