ABSTRACT
One gap in knowledge that weighs into this debate is quantifying how much erosion at a site is attributed to anthropogenic forces. In some areas, careful inventory of the tidal shoreline has been made, and those tools are used extensively by managers and landowners to make decisions about whether erosion control practices should be used at a site. Shoreline erosion control projects may have impacts on neighboring shorelines or on living resources that depend on some level of sediment input from erosive processes. In a hybrid living shoreline, a nonnative hard substance is used in conjunction with a natural habitat feature to provide longer-term stability. The nonstructural/living shoreline erosion control community currently does not have design standards—rates of failure in suites of different energy regimes, substrate types, bathymetry, topography, and other characteristics. The regulatory and policy community listed two biggest gaps, a self-acknowledgment of gaps in the regulatory realm as well as gaps in the research realm on ecosystem trade-offs.
