Measuring and Evaluating Restoration of Hydrology in Coastal Plain Forested Wetlands of North Carolina

Guidelines for restoring the hydrology of a particular wetland community are lacking. In order to address this, I conducted three studies using forested wetlands of the North Carolina coastal plain as case studies. The first study looked at identifying patterns in water table levels from natural forest wetlands that could be used to guide and evaluate restoration of the same community type. I then used the best measures of water table level pattern to evaluate how well hydrology was restored at two different wetland restoration sites. The second study looked at using hydrologic modeling to simulate water table levels from forested wetland reference sites. The third study provided a thorough review of potential hydrologic models and evaluated their ability to model water table level patterns. This study aimed to provide restoration practitioners with an understanding of the modeling capabilities available to simulate the hydrologic regime of individual reference wetlands.;Our results from the first study showed that monthly median water table levels encompassing the start of the growing season had the strongest correlation with plant community composition, while roughly five other measures also had strong correlations. Based on the best measures, both of the restoration sites had water table levels that generally fell within the natural range of the reference sites. Since there was some variation across the restoration sites, the different measures where useful to identify which areas where least similar to the reference sites and might need further monitoring in the future. Based on our results, we recommend using community-specific measures of hydrology to guide and assess forested wetland restoration. The second study found that two different modeling approaches, a time series model and a water-balance model, did not have the necessary accuracy to model the water table level patterns of a particular forest wetland community found in the coastal plain of North Carolina. As a result, neither model could be used to simulate water table levels from reference sites. The third study found that the practice lacks models that can match the peaks (maximums) and troughs (minimums) of natural wetland water table levels, models that can accurately simulate critical periods such as the early growing season/pre-growing season, and models that can simulated both aboveground and belowground water table levels. As a result, until modeling improves, practitioners should use multiple reference sites to assess the hydrologic regime of restored sites.;In conclusion, we found that forested wetland communities have unique water table level patterns which can be measured and used as a reference to evaluate restoration sites. However, modeling the hydrologic regime of reference sites is not yet a feasible alternative to using actual data collected from reference sites.