Challenges in Marine Restoration Ecology: How Techniques, Assessment Metrics, and Ecosystem Valuation Can Lead to Improved Restoration Success

Evaluating the effectiveness and success of coastal marine habitat restoration is often highly challenging and can vary substantially between different habitat types. The current article presents a state-of-the-art review of habitat-level restoration in the coastal marine environment. It sets out most successful techniques across habitats and suggestions of better metrics to assess their success. Improvements in restoration approach are outlined, with a particular focus on selective breeding, using recent advancements in genetics. Furthermore, the assessment of ecosystem services, as a metric to determine restoration success on a spatiotemporal scale, is addressed in this article. As the concept of ecosystem services is more tangible for a nonscientific audience, evaluating restoration success in this manner has the potential to greatly contribute to raising awareness of environmental issues and to implement socioeconomic policies. Moreover, habitat-based restoration has been proven to be an effective tool to address the issue of ecosystem service sustainability and poverty alleviation. Appropriate conservation management, prior to the implementation of restoration activities, is crucial to create an environment in which restoration efforts are likely to succeed.