BUILD FOR NATURE, NOT ONLY WITH NATURE, TO ENGINEER RECOVERY OF COASTAL ECOSYSTEMS

In contrast to most engineering with nature or what are commonly called ‘build with nature’ projects, we term the engineered recovery of degraded coastal ecosystems ‘build for nature’ projects. Baird has been involved with innovative ‘build for nature’ projects in different coastal environments throughout the world, however we here focus on coral reef, seagrass, and marshland recovery projects in the Caribbean. We distinguish these coastal engineering projects from those that build ‘nature-based solutions’ such as artificial wetlands, as well as hybrid projects such as the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)- funded hybrid coral reef being planning in Biscayne Bay. In contrast to these engineering with nature projects, we showcase ‘build for nature’ projects for which investment of effort was made to understand the problem and tailor an ecosystem-wide solution. In addition, Baird has made significant investment in long-term monitoring of coastal engineering-mediated restoration, to ascertain if ecosystem resilien