The amount of ecological restoration required to mitigate or compensate for environmental injury or habitat loss is often based on the goal of achieving ecological equivalence. However, few tools are available for estimating the extent of restoration required to achieve habitat services equivalent to those that were lost. This paper describes habitat equivalency analysis (HEA), a habitat-based "service-to-service" approach for determining the amount of restoration needed to compensate for natural resource losses, and examines issues in its application in the case of salt marsh restoration. The scientific literature indicates that although structural attributes such as vegetation may recover within a few years, there is often a significant lag in the development of ecological processes such as nutrient cycling that are necessary for a fully functioning salt marsh. Moreover, natural variation can make recovery trajectories difficult to define and predict for many habitat services. HEA is an excellent tool for scaling restoration actions because it reflects this ecological variability and complexity. At the same time, practitioners must recognize that conclusions about the amount of restoration needed to provide ecological services equivalent to those that are lost will depend critically on the ecological data and assumptions that are used in the HEA calculation.

Abstract-This study quantitatively evaluated the relationships among As, Co, and Cu concentrations in exposure media (surface water, sediment, and aufwuchs), As, Co, and Cu concentrations in aquatic macroinvertebrates, and invertebrate community structure in a mine-affected stream. Concentrations of As, Co, and Cu were significantly elevated in both exposure media and invertebrate tissue downstream from the mine. Copper in invertebrates was significantly correlated only with Cu in aufwuchs, and Co in invertebrates was significantly correlated only with dissolved Co in water, suggesting different mechanisms of invertebrate accumulation for these two metals. The invertebrate community was severely affected downstream from the mine, with a loss of metalssensitive species and reductions in both total biomass and number of species. Total abundance was not affected. Principal components analysis was performed on the invertebrate community data to develop a simplified description of community response to mine inputs. Based on this index, metal concentrations in invertebrates were poor predictors of community structure. Copper concentrations in water, combined with an estimate of invertebrate drift from clean tributaries, were statistically significant predictors of community structure.

Habitat equivalency analysis (HEA) was developed as a tool to scale mitigation or restoration when habitat is contaminated by hazardous substances or has been otherwise harmed by anthropogenic activities. Applying HEA involves balancing reductions in habitat quality against gains from restoration actions, and quantifying changes in habitat quality in terms of ecological services. We propose a framework for developing ecological service definitions and measures that incorporate knowledge about the impacts of chemical contaminants on biota. We describe a general model for integrating multiple lines of evidence about the toxicity of hazardous substances to allow mapping of toxicological inputs to ecological service losses. We provide an example of how this framework might be used in a HEA that quantifies ecological services provided by estuarine sediments contaminated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

Stocking of hatchery fish can quickly recover human use services such as fishing that are lost when human activities injure fishery resources. In such cases, hatchery costs are used to estimate replacement‐based monetary damages for the injury. However, there is increasing concern that hatchery fish are not ecologically equivalent to wild fish, and therefore may fail to provide the same level of ecological and human use services provided by fish replaced through natural production. An alternative approach for estimating fish replacement costs, the habitat‐based replacement cost (HRC) method, estimates the cost of restoring habitat to the level necessary to offset fish losses through natural production. By focusing on the production of wild fish in natural habitats, the HRC approach provides an ecologically‐based alternative to hatchery‐based replacement costs for both quantifying and monetizing fish resource injuries.

It is sometimes argued that, from an ecological point of view, population-, community-, and ecosystem-level endpoints are more relevant than individual-level endpoints for assessing the risks posed by human activities to the sustainability of natural resources. Yet society values amenities provided by natural resources that are not necessarily evaluated or protected by assessment tools that focus on higher levels of biological organization. For example, human-caused stressors can adversely affect recreational opportunities that are valued by society even in the absence of detectable population-level reductions in biota. If protective measures are not initiated until effects at higher levels of biological organization are apparent, natural resources that are ecologically important or highly valued by the public may not be adequately protected. Thus, environmental decision makers should consider both scientific and societal factors in selecting endpoints for ecological risk assessments. At the same time, it is important to clearly distinguish the role of scientists, which is to evaluate ecological effects, from the role of policy makers, which is to determine how to address the uncertainty in scientific assessment in making environmental decisions and to judge what effects are adverse based on societal values and policy goals.