In the northern Gulf of Mexico, salt marshes are threatened by sea level rise, erosion, and loss of protective barrier islands. These barrier islands provide critical habitat for wildlife, including globally significant populations of marsh and shorebirds. We investigated salt marsh restoration on two Louisiana barrier islands using presence of eight marsh bird species as an index to evaluate restoration success. Land loss was extensive for both islands prior to restoration, with submerged marsh restored by backfilling sediment into the marsh platform. Restoration methods were similar between the two islands, although Raccoon Island was built to a higher elevation (1.1 m) than Whiskey Island (0.8 m). Avian presence was estimated via passive acoustic monitoring and point counts. To evaluate restoration success, we modeled influence of habitat covariates on index species presence in restored and reference (intact) sites over three breeding seasons and modeled occupancy for six species. On Whiskey Island, index richness was higher in restored sites. Marsh specialists Seaside Sparrows (Ammospiza maritima) and Least Bitterns (Ixobrychus exilis) had higher occupancy in restored areas on Whiskey, while generalist species showed no response to site. These results are likely due to a strong association between habitat and vegetation type, with restored sites dominated by Spartina alterniflora and reference sites by Avicennia germinans. On Raccoon Island, species richness was low across all sites. Our results suggest that restoration efforts were successful in creating salt marsh habitat on Whiskey but not Raccoon as of the time of our study.

中文翻译：

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屏障岛盐沼恢复对墨西哥湾北部沼泽鸟类发生的影响

在墨西哥湾北部，盐沼受到海平面上升，侵蚀和保护性隔离岛的丧失的威胁。这些障碍岛为野生生物提供了重要的栖息地，其中包括全球范围内大量的沼泽和水鸟。我们使用八个沼泽鸟类物种的存在作为评估恢复成功的指标，调查了两个路易斯安那州障壁岛的盐沼恢复。恢复之前，两个岛屿的土地流失都十分严重，通过将沉积物回填到沼泽平台中，恢复了被淹没的沼泽。尽管浣熊岛的建造高度（1.1 m）比威士忌岛（0.8 m）高，但两个岛的恢复方法相似。禽类的存在是通过被动声学监测和点数估算得出的。为了评估恢复成功，我们在三个繁殖季节中模拟了栖息地协变量对恢复和参考（完整）地点索引物种存在的影响，并模拟了六个物种的占有率。在威士忌岛上，恢复站点的索引丰富度更高。沼泽专家Seaside Sparrows（Ammospiza maritima和Least Bitterns（Ixobrychus exilis）在威士忌恢复区的占有率较高，而通才种对现场无反应。这些结果可能归因于栖息地和植被类型之间的强烈关联，其中恢复的站点以互花米草为主导，参考站点以白粉虱为生。在浣熊岛上，所有地点的物种丰富度都很低。我们的研究结果表明，截至研究之日，恢复工作已成功地在威士忌上创造了盐沼栖息地，但在浣熊上却并非如此。