In human-impacted coastal ecosystems, living shorelines are becoming a common restoration technique. However, we lack a comprehensive understanding of the ecological and physical benefits, and how they could inform management needs. To address this, we studied effectiveness of living shorelines at a broad spatial scale within the Washington State boundaries of the Salish Sea, USA, with restored site ages spanning 1–11 years. We surveyed 30 beaches at ten locations, each with three strata of: (1) living shoreline beaches with armor removed, (2) armored control beaches altered by seawalls or riprap, and (3) un-armored reference beaches with natural conditions. We sampled eight physical and biological attributes: beach wrack, wrack invertebrates, sediments, terrestrial insects, riparian vegetation, logs, beach profiles, and stable isotope signatures of talitrid amphipods – generating 27 metrics focusing on upper intertidal and supratidal elevations affected by armoring and targeted by living shoreline actions. These metrics spanned the functions of beach stability, ecological diversity, and food web support for juvenile salmon. Statistical tests showed that 19 of the 27 metrics had significant strata differences, indicating that some beach metrics restore quickly (e.g., wrack accumulation), while others take longer (e.g., log accumulation). Terrestrial-associated metrics were higher at reference beaches, but insect taxa richness and logs with plant growth increased at beaches restored for four or more years (the average age of the living shoreline sites). This implies that certain living shoreline functions increase through time, providing improved food web support. Globally, trajectories of restoration have shown a range of functional improvement with time, and will be important to monitor for nature-based solutions to coastal defense given the increasing rate of shoreline stressors from global change and sea level rise.

在受人类影响的沿海生态系统中，有生命的海岸线正在成为一种常见的恢复技术。但是，我们对生态和自然效益以及它们如何满足管理需求缺乏全面的了解。为了解决这个问题，我们研究了在美国萨利什海的华盛顿州边界内，在较大空间范围内的活动海岸线的有效性，其恢复地点的年龄跨度为1-11年。我们在十个地点对30个海滩进行了调查，每个海滩分为三个层次：（1）拆除了装甲的生活海岸线海滩；（2）被防波堤或riprap改变的装甲控制海滩；以及（3）具有自然条件的非装甲参考海滩。我们对八个物理和生物属性进行了采样：海滩残骸，残骸无脊椎动物，沉积物，陆生昆虫，河岸植被，原木，海滩轮廓，的拟南芥两栖动物的同位素特征和稳定同位素特征-生成27个度量指标，重点关注受装甲影响并受居住的海岸线行动影响的潮间带和上旋上高程。这些指标涵盖了海滩稳定性，生态多样性和对幼鲑的食物网支持的功能。统计测试表明，在27个指标中，有19个具有显着的地层差异，表明某些海滩指标可快速恢复（例如，残骸积累），而其他指标则需要更长的时间（例如，对数积累）。在参考海滩上，与陆地有关的指标较高，但在恢复了四年或四年以上的海滩上（活动海岸线站点的平均年龄），昆虫类群的丰富度和随植物生长而增加的原木增加了。这意味着某些现存的海岸线功能会随着时间的推移而增加，提供改进的食物网支持。在全球范围内，随着时间的推移，恢复的轨迹显示出一系列功能上的改善，鉴于全球变化和海平面上升带来的海岸线压力源的增加，监测基于自然的海岸防御解决方案将非常重要。