(ERDC-EL), to summarize known impacts on seasonal habitats used by migratory shoreline-dependent birds (primarily shorebirds and seabirds) and nesting sea turtles along the Atlantic Coast by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) coastal engineering activities. The USACE is responsible for maintaining coastal infrastructure including ports, harbors, shoreline stabilization, and maintenance of the Intracoastal Waterway System (ICWW) along the Atlantic Coast. This infrastructure is essential to the long-term sustainability of national and economic prosperity by ensuring navigation through ports and harbors that transport goods necessary for national and international commerce. Coastal shoreline stabilization and sediment management can also provide opportunities for reductions in storm surge, flood control, residential growth, recreational activities, coastal habitat restoration, and fisheries management. Routine engineering actions by the USACE includes maintenance dredging and dredged material deposition, beach nourishment, inlet realignment and shoreline stabilization, and dike, sea wall, terminal groin and revetment construction. These actions can alter the shape, structure and function of coastal habitats, and have the potential for both positive and negative seasonal effects on shoreline-dependent organisms. The objectives of this technical note include the following: (1) introducing issues concerning coastal engineering impacts on shorelinedependent birds and sea turtles, (2) providing suggestions on specific management approaches that can be used to minimize these impacts, and (3) developing insights for future research and monitoring that should be undertaken to ensure that management actions are having the desired effect on target populations. BACKGROUND: The U.S. Atlantic coast supports more than 35 shorebird species and an additional 13 tern and skimmer species (Sibley 2016). Five species of sea turtles are known to nest on beaches along the U.S. Atlantic or Gulf Coasts. Many North American birds and sea turtles are highly dependent upon coastal, sediment-based habitats, including beaches, inlets, marshes, bays, and estuaries. Maintenance and enhancement of navigation infrastructure often requires large expenditures in equipment, and the design and implementation of engineering projects to build, maintain, or enhance existing coastal infrastructure. Harbors, ports, approach channels, and the ICWW require sufficient depths to permit navigation of large oceanic cargo vessels used for the

INTRODUCTION:The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) serves as the Nation's environmental engineer. Within this capacity, the USACE designs, plans, oversees, and manages multiple civil works and military construction efforts. The advancement of sustainable design and development practices that beneficially integrate engineering and ecology is a goal of USACE projects (https://ewn.el.erdc.dren.mil/About.html). Once completed, USACE projects are often in service for many decades; therefore, USACE planners must consider long-term changes in the environmental setting of each project (Cann 2010). Wildlife distributions change over time in response to the gain and loss of habitat, as well as other natural processes. Regulatory actions, such as the designation of critical habitat under the Endangered Species Act, can allow for habitat to be preserved promoting source populations that can expand their distribution if conditions are favorable. The listing or de-listing of Threatened and Endangered Species can have direct impacts on USACE projects coming to fruition after years of planning. In an effort to predict potential impacts to USACE restoration sites from species range shifts either into or out of an area, this technical note provides a methodological framework and promotes a model design that has the capacity to inform future decision making. PURPOSE:This effort will develop a working model that can serve as a tool to predict range shifts of threatened, endangered and at-risk species (TER-S), as environmental conditions are altered by climate change (CC). This tool will assist the USACE with future planning and preparation for restoration projects that incorporate management for TER-S already present within the North Atlantic Division (NAD). Changes in climate have an impact on a wide variety of components within natural environments. Temperature and precipitation changes impact vegetation phenology that may disrupt ecosystems in a way that changes TER-S habitats. With the wide breadth of potential impacts from CC, earlier efforts have focused on developing tools for specific circumstances and/or impacts. However, as each of these factors change independently to impact other components, a more comprehensive methodology is needed to conduct a robust assessment of the impacts of CC across a variety of situations and locations.Models that display where TER-S are currently located, and to what extent these range shifts will occur, will be of great importance towards future project planning and resource management. Britzke et al. (2014) outlines existing research products for physical upland climate drivers (e.g., precipitation, temperature, land classification) that are suitable for delineating biome shift vulnerability. For example, some TER-S are strongly associated with specific vegetation communities and forecasting vegetation dynamics can be causally linked to TER-S ranges. Typically, these approaches used species distribution and regression models to statistically 2 understand changes to spatial ranges given a ...

The main objective of the workshop was to assemble an interagency and interdisciplinary group of wildlife biologists and managers to detail how Section 7(a)(1) consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) can facilitate conservation planning of listed species on federal lands. Goals of this workshop included the following: (a) providing basic information on the function and process of Section 7(a)(1) conservation planning, (b) emphasizing the role of Section 7(a)(1) to support agency missions while promoting proactive conservation planning for federally threatened and endangered species (TES) recovery, (c) providing detailed examples of successful application of Section 7(a)(1) conservation planning on federal lands, and (d) identifying opportunities to facilitate and improve Section 7(a)(1) actions for future conservation efforts and for effective management and population recovery of TES inhabiting federal lands. The information provided in this TN is derived from presentations made during the workshop by representatives of the USACE,

The beneficial use of dredged materials improves environmental outcomes while maximizing navigation benefits and minimizing costs, in accordance with the principles of the Engineering With Nature® (EWN) initiative. Yet, few studies document the long-term benefits of innovative dredged material management strategies or conduct comprehensive life-cycle analysis because of a combination of (1) short monitoring time frames and (2) the paucity of constructed projects that have reached ecological maturity. In response, we conducted an ecological functional and engineering benefit assessment of six historic (>40 years old) dredged material–supported habitat improvement projects where initial postconstruction beneficial use monitoring data was available. Conditions at natural reference locations were also documented to facilitate a comparison between natural and engineered landscape features. Results indicate the projects examined provide valuable habitat for a variety of species in addition to yielding a number of engineering (for example, shoreline protection) and other (for example, carbon storage) benefits. Our findings also suggest establishment of ecological success criteria should not overemphasize replicating reference conditions but remain focused on achieving specific ecological functions (that is, habitat and biogeochemical cycling) and engineering benefits (that is, storm surge reduction, navigation channel maintenance) achievable through project design and operational management.

This technical report summarizes the use of US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) reservoirs as spring and fall migration stopover sites for the endangered Aransas–Wood Buffalo population of whooping cranes (WHCR), which proved much greater than previously known. We assessed stopover use within the migration flyway with satellite transmitter data on 68 WHCR during 2009–2018 from a study by the US Geological Survey (USGS) and collaborators, resulting in over 165,000 location records, supplemented by incidental observations from the US Fish and Wildlife Ser-vice (USFWS) and the USGS Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON) databases. Significant stopover use was observed during both spring and fall migration, and one reservoir served as a wintering location in multiple years. Future efforts should include (a) continued monitoring for WHCR at USACE reservoirs within the flyway; (b) reservoir-specific management plans at all projects with significant WHCR stopover; (c) a USACE-specific and range-wide Endangered Species Act Section 7(a)(1) conservation plan that specifies proactive conservation actions; (d) habitat management plans that include potential pool-level modifications during spring and fall to optimize stopover habitat conditions; and (e) continued evaluation of habitat conditions at USACE reservoirs.