Seattle’s new Waterfront Park development — a decade and a half and $800 million in the making — includes a rebuilt seawall. It works to reconnect the city to the glittering water of Puget Sound. Baby salmon can be seen swimming past, shining silver glitter amid waving fronds of bull kelp. Right overhead, people walk over glass blocks set in the concrete of the seawall to allow light to pass into the waters of Elliott Bay.
The $330 million replacement seawall was completed in 2017 and has helped accommodate salmon and other aquatic life. Glass blocks and grating in the seawall are a way to be a bit more fish-friendly. Shallowing up the bottom and adding complexity and unevenness to the seawall also provides a place for sea life to grow, rest and feed. It’s a step up, ecologically, from the deep, dark, concrete wall that used to be there, said Jason Toft, principal research scientist at the Wetland Ecosystem Team at the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington. Researchers from this team have been instrumental in the restoration work and continued monitoring since the new seawall.
Ecosystem restoration has historically had a very ecological focus with goals of improving different ecological metrics such as percentage of vegetation cover, presence of fish and other species, ecological functioning, and more. However, while teaching a special interdisciplinary class during her time as a postdoc and co-PI at Duke University, SAFS Assistant Professor, Carter Smith, took a slightly different view: how can ecosystem restoration be used to directly improve human wellbeing?
Carter Smith, SAFS Assistant Professor
Recently published in January 2025 in PNAS, this concept is outlined in a new paper that explores how ecosystem restoration can make individuals and communities more resilient through enhancing optimism, making people more connected to their environment, and making people more socially connected. “The original goal of the project was to understand interdisciplinary resilience concepts and how they apply to ecosystem restoration,” Carter said. “As part of our deep dive into the literature, we realized that a lot of people were talking about resilience in restoration focused on ecological or disaster resilience, but there was a real knowledge gap in understanding how restoration can impact social and psychological wellbeing of people.”
The study sets out these three individual and community-level strengths that the team of researchers thought could be enhanced through restoration. Bringing together scientists, faculty and students from Duke University, University of Adelaide, North Carolina State University and NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science – as part of Duke’s Bass Connections program – the team compiled information about promising community-engaged restoration projects from around the world, and some recommendations for how restoration can be conducted to improve psychosocial resilience through this lens. “Examples of community-based restoration exist on a vast scale, from engaging diverse stakeholders at the initial goal-setting stage of a project to build trust, all the way to biocultural restoration projects that include community workdays and shared meals as a way to build relationships and learn about traditional cultures”, Carter shared.
Conceptual diagram showing the idealized role of restoration as a resilience-building endeavor in a social-ecological system.
So what are some of the actionable ways to enhance psychosocial resilience through ecosystem restoration? The answer could be to just bring people into the process wherever and however possible and moving restoration projects from largely technical endeavors to ones which account for human-nature relationships. “Directly engaging community members in the restoration process to assist with planning or implementation, or indirectly by facilitating access to natural areas and creating a place where people can do the activities in nature that they value are some of the ways to do this,” Carter shared. Embedding community spaces around or within restoration projects, such as boardwalks, beach parks, or community centers, are some examples of this.
But caution was advised about further eroding human relationships with the natural world through the technologization of restoration. “There is a huge emphasis in restoration right now on upscaling and technologizing the restoration process – and this will likely be very important for meeting some restoration goals – but we shouldn’t lose sight of the value of community-engaged projects,” Carter said.
Many of us have experienced the benefits of being outside in nature, and it’s a well-studied area in relation to psychological and physical benefits, from reducing anxiety and cardiovascular disease, to helping your nightly slumber. And this is a great place for many people to start. “Getting involved in restoration can be really small and as simple as joining beach cleanups and planting native plants in your backyard,” Carter said.
In a time of general climate pessimism, celebrating success stories is a way to combat climate despair. “A healthy amount of doom and gloom is needed right now to acknowledge the magnitude of the problem we’re facing, but I would encourage people to see hope in the successful restoration stories we’re seeing from across the globe,” Carter added. “I draw a lot of hope and inspiration from learning about biocultural restoration projects that incorporate traditional ecological knowledge, from large-scale seagrass restoration in the Chesapeake Bay, oyster restoration in parts of Australia where oysters were functionally extinct, and from numerous reforestation projects globally.”
Ecological response and physical stability of habitat enhancements along an urban armored shoreline
Jason D. Tofta, Corresponding author contact information, E-mail the corresponding author,
Andrea S. Ogstonb,
Sarah M. Heerhartza,
Jeffery R. Cordella,
Emilie E. Flemerb
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoleng.2013.04.022
Highlights
Shoreline enhancements seek to restore upon armored conditions.
In our study the two enhancements were a habitat bench and pocket beach.
Juvenile Chinook salmon and larval fishes used the habitat bench and pocket beach.
Aquatic invertebrates and terrestrial insects showed positive responses.
Physical components of the habitat bench and pocket beach were relatively stable.
Abstract
Shoreline armoring is prevalent worldwide and has resulted in substantial habitat alteration in heavily urbanized areas. The biological and physical processes associated with these shorelines have in many cases been compromised, which has led to a recent focus on how to design and implement projects to restore some of the lost or impaired functions, termed enhancement. We describe a multi-year effort testing whether an enhanced site has improved conditions in Seattle, WA, USA, along urban marine shorelines of Puget Sound. The Olympic Sculpture Park opened in January 2007 and included construction of two shallow-water features: a low-terrace habitat bench placed in front of an existing seawall, and a constructed pocket beach that replaced existing riprap. Riparian vegetation was also planted in the uplands replacing impervious surfaces and manicured lawn. We measured the functions of these sites by sampling both before and after enhancements (2005, 2007, and 2009), and comparing to adjacent armored shorelines. Although we are limited in our ability to make generalizations beyond this specific site due to only having one replicate of each shoreline type, the unique aspects of this urban enhancement make it useful as a case study that can apply to other urban systems. Fishes that are dependent on shallow water habitat were a main focus of sampling, specifically outmigrating juvenile salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) and larvae of other species. Terrestrial and aquatic invertebrates were also assessed, both as a metric for habitat quality and as a determinant of available prey resources for juvenile salmon. Physical features of the created habitats were monitored in post-enhancement years to measure their stability. Results showed that shoreline enhancements increased densities of larval fishes and juvenile salmon and measurements of juvenile salmon feeding behavior dependent on the year, and provided habitat for invertebrate assemblages that were different from armored shorelines and had high taxa richness. Physical resilience depended on both natural processes and human activities, demonstrating the need to incorporate anthropogenic use into the management of urban shorelines.
Keywords
