ABSTRACT
The advantages of using oyster reefs as living shorelines include enhancing coastal Louisiana's important oyster population, reducing marsh edge retreat, and providing a potentially sustainable framework for this erosion protection through sustainable reefs. While the primary goal of living shorelines projects is to help stabilize shoreline edges and reduce shoreline erosion, most projects promise delivery of other ecosystem services, including fisheries habitat and water quality enhancement, based on literature from other areas that quantify the contributions of healthy shellfish reefs. The projects were compared and contrasted using a set of common parameters collected at each of the projects through independent monitoring programs. Specifically, discuss data on environmental site conditions, eastern oyster recruitment and population dynamics, biotic interactions, and adjacent marsh retreat. The presence of multiple foundation species could also have the added benefit of expanding the environmental conditions under which the reef may provide ecosystem services and help provide resiliency to reefs particularly in areas with changing conditions.
