ABSTRACT

Federal environmental statutes provide liability schemes whereby parties responsible for injuring corals are liable for the costs of restoration. Restoration includes projects designed to return the coral to baseline conditions as well as projects designed to compensate for the coral ecosystem services lost from the time of injury until the time of full recovery. The challenge facing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other federal and state trustees is to develop legally defensible methodologies to quantify the amount of compensatory restoration owed by those liable

for injuries to coral. This chapter will explore the use of Habitat Equivalency Analysis (HEA) as a legally defensible means to quantify the amount of compensatory restoration owed, examine metrics for appropriate measurement of recovery for western Atlantic coral reefs, recommend coral recovery horizons for use in the HEA, and recommend future research to refine coral recovery horizons.