Rehabilitation of Coastal Ecosystems

摘要

The field of coastal habitat rehabilitation has been steadily growing over the last two decades. As salt marsh, mangrove, coral reef, seagrass, dune and other coastal systems have been increasingly, subject to anthropogenic impacts, so research into techniques for rehabilitation has burgeoned together with the implementation of major projects to rehabilitate or restore habitats (e.g., Field, 1996; Fonseca, 1994; Miller et al., 1993; Zedler, 1984). Whereas mangrove, salt marsh and dune rehabilitation techniques appear reasonably well-established management tools, coral reef rehabilitation is still largely at an experimental stage, with seagrass restoration at an intermediate stage of development. Given that systems can be ranked in order of rehabilitation costs as follows: salt marshes < mangroves < seagrass-es < coral reefs (Spurgeon, this issue); it is perhaps not surprising that large-scale rehabilitation has focused on those systems which are less costly to rehabilitate.