St Louis River Estuary, Duluth Harbor-Analysis of Restoration Methods

Brett Hayhurst, Army Corps of Engineer and CBFS PhD student, Watkins (Cornell) (Funded by the Army Corps of Engineers) 

This research aims to assess the success of restoration projects in the Duluth Harbor area of Lake Superior.  Duluth Harbor has a long legacy of industrialization.  The Army Corps is actively working to address beneficial use impairments in this area and needs to establish criteria for determining when restoration efforts are successful and how to measure their effectiveness. Some restoration efforts include the application of clean dredge sediment, a ubiquitous resource in this commercial harbor.  PhD student Hayhurst is currently working on developing indices based on long-term data for macrophytes and benthic invertebrates that can be used to select sites to conserve or restore, and in the end to evaluate the success of these restoration measures. These indices are being applied to various areas within the Duluth Harbor and the St. Louis River estuary. This research builds upon his master's thesis titled "Evaluating the performance of the 21st Avenue West freshwater estuary restoration in Duluth Harbor: a case study."