The Commercial Township Salt Hay Farm, in the southern portion of the Delaware Bay, is being restored through the Estuary Enhancement Program. The diked marsh was degraded and subsided from sedimentation, soil compaction, and soil oxidation. This project uses thin-layer placement to increase marsh elevation and restore marsh function. 

Supported by NOAA’s Office for Coastal Management, the Shoalwater Bay Tribe, local government, and the North Cove community designed a “dynamic revetment” along the shoreline with rebuilt dunes and placement of cobble berms as part of the local efforts to find effective treatments for severe shoreline erosion, flooding, and sea level rise along Willapa Bay, Washington.

While massive waves attract surfers and visitors to the North Shore of O‘ahu in Hawai‘i, they also cause coastal erosion and high sea level events that threaten coastal residents. Instead of building sea walls, the state took an ecological approach by restoring sand dunes in front of coastal properties.

The Alabama DOT considered a nature-based solution for a bridge replacement and highway realignment project across Mobile Bay, AL. The plan involved using a continuous rock revetment from the edge of the pavement down to the existing bay bottom, complemented by a nature-based solution consisting of stone breakwaters and planted marsh in front of the revetment.

Coastal Louisiana contains around 40% of the wetlands in the continental United States and accounts for approximately 80% of the nation’s wetland loss due to sea-level rise, storm surges, and subsidence. This project restored 1,600 hectares of bald cypress (Taxodium distichum) forest at Pointe-aux-Chenes Wildlife Management Area. 

Deer Island is a barrier island in the Mississippi Sound that protects the city of Biloxi from storm impacts, sea-level rise, and wind impacts. Storms caused a breach in the island, reducing elevation, killing vegetation and eroding beaches. The island was restored using dredged material to increase elevation and nourish beaches.  

Deer Island is a barrier island in the Mississippi Sound that protects the city of Biloxi from storm impacts, sea-level rise, and wind impacts. Storms caused a breach in the island, reducing elevation, killing vegetation and eroding beaches. The island was restored using dredged material to increase elevation and nourish beaches.  

This project is a cooperative initiative carried out by the Delaware Bay Oyster Restoration Task Force to revitalize the Eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica) population in Delaware Bay. With congressional support and federal funding, the task force coordinated the planting of more than 280,000 bushels of ocean quahog, surf clam and Maryland oyster shells spread over 150 acres in 2005.

An engineer-ecologist team designed a living shoreline tailored to conditions on New England coastlines. After site analysis, the team used coir products (“marsh pillows”) in their living shoreline design. This winter storm-resistant approach slowed the erosion of a 30-foot bank, increased vegetation cover, and protected coastal properties. 

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers established a 5-hectare marsh on Drake Wilson Island off of the coast of Florida in 1976. This was one of the earliest beneficial use of dredged material projects for habitat enhancement. For more than 40 years, this marsh has created recreational opportunities and reduced erosion. 

The New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is strategically placing dredged sediment from the Mississippi River federal navigation channel to restore marsh habitat, improve and ensure the integrity of the navigation channel, and promote sediment deposition in the bay. 

This project is testing the effectiveness of dune restoration as a tactic for combatting sea-level rise and erosion in Southern California. Sand dunes were constructed from locally dredged material and planted with native vegetation. It is projected that this project will successfully protect the shoreline from flooding with no additional sand maintenance until 2050.  

The Dutch Slough project is a large-scale tidal marsh restoration, habitat enhancement and open space preservation project in the rapidly urbanizing area of eastern Contra Costa County. The 1,166-acre site was purchased in 2003, and adaptive management interventions were planned as experiments to study how the ecosystem functions and how best to achieve the restoration objectives.

The Duwamish Estuary in Seattle, Washington has been subject to heavy industrial development and pronounced anthropogenic disturbances associated with the Port of Seattle and other commercial facilities along its waters. This project sought to restore intertidal wetlands at three sites in the estuary, and to thereby enhance public access to the river and create vital habitat for several important species.

Terminal 117, a former industrial and superfund site along the Duwamish River, was transformed into the Duwamish River People’s Park and Shoreline Habitat. This project cleaned up a contaminated site, restored natural and stable shoreline habitat, and created river access in a historically marginalized neighborhood. 

This project will restore dunes on Duxbury Beach to prevent erosion and enhance the beach’s ability to protect communities behind it from storm surges and sea-level rise. 76,633 tons of sand were used to restore the dunes. The dunes were raised to 17ft high, and the tops of the dunes were raised to over 45 feet.  

The Heritage Reach is a portion of the Santa Cruz River that runs through a highly urbanized portion of Tuscon, Arizona. This area used to support a variety of wildlife but has severely degraded from urban development. In 2019, Tuscon Water began releasing treated effluent into the Reach to restore river flows. 

This project is a large-scale, multi-agency Effort to eradicate the infestations of the invasive strain of the tropical marine alga, Caulerpa taxifolia from two sites in California. At the time when no technique had been demonstrated effective to treat the infestations, the team chose to apply chlorine bleach treatment.

This project planted approximately 474,634 native plants seaward of existing dunes along Pensacola Beach on Santa Rosa Island, Florida. Plantings were 76% sea oats, 19% panic grass, and 5% other native species. These plants were chosen to maximize sand stabilization and limit wind erosion of the dunes.

This project installed a living shoreline off the coast of Eastpoint, Florida to reduce shoreline erosion and provide habitat. This living shoreline used natural and/or artificial breakwater materials to reduce wave energy, create salt marsh habitat, and increase benthic productivity. This project created over 1 acre of new salt marsh habitat.