New Jersey Nature-Based Coastal Project Assessment and Evaluation Framework and Tool Development

Nature-based approaches to promote climate resilience are increasing rapidly, creating an urgent need for extended monitoring and comparative analysis of project outcomes including durability and effectiveness. Often, monitoring expertise or limited project budgets and timelines preclude gathering sufficient data, especially in cases where the pace of ecological succession to climax is much longer than the funding period for post-installation monitoring. This project aims to address monitoring gaps, including longer-term outcomes associated with projects that may or may not continue to be monitored and maintained through a systematic evaluation framework.  Since the goals of nature-based projects often differ, associated project monitoring plans often differ to meet specific goals. However, nature-based projects can sometimes yield diverse co-benefits that promote other ecosystem goods and services that promote climate resilience and climate mitigation.

This project will develop a framework for gauging the effectiveness of existing implemented nature-based coastal projects in meeting project-specific and common climate mitigation and climate resilience goals related to ecological enhancement, flood protection, water quality improvement, and shoreline stabilization of tidally influenced habitats of NJ.  The tools will include a preliminary guidance document and standard operating procedure for assessment of existing or future projects as well as a web-based application of the evaluation protocol integrated into the NJ ResTOrS tool kit. Recommendations will include core measures and metrics that nature-based projects should be encouraged to be assessed for future projects.

The Rutgers Co-Principal Investigators include Dr. Daniel Barone (Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences and Director, Infrastructure Resilience Program, Center for Advanced Infrastructure and Transportation);  Dr. David Bushek (Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences and Director, Rutgers Marine Stations);  Dr. Richard Lathrop (Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources and Professor and Director, Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis); Dr. Robert Miskewitz (Marine Infrastructure Research Group Center for Advanced Infrastructure and Transportation); and Jenny Shinn (Haskin Shellfish Research Laboratory).