Abstract or Summary
The NOAA Restoration Center (RC) provides funding and technical assistance to help communities restore coastal habitats. Through our fisheries restoration grant programs (e.g. Community-based Restoration Program), the RC has identified the four most common project types: fish passage barrier removals, coral restoration, hydrologic restoration, and oyster restoration. Specific metrics have been identified for these project types to consistently evaluate whether a project was implemented as designed and provides a basic level of effectiveness. These metrics provide quality assurance for project construction, and are required for all funded projects within these four project types. This “Tier I” monitoring occurs within the context of the RC’s monitoring and evaluation framework. Tier I metrics for each project have a quantitative targets defined before project implementation. Typically, data are collected using the same methods pre- and post-implementation and compared with the target value.
Award recipients are expected to develop three monitoring-related documents during the course of their award—a Monitoring Plan, a Data Sharing Plan, and a final progress report including monitoring results.