There is an increasing interest in, and opportunity to, incorporate reclamation and restoration activities into development and redevelopment projects. However, this presents a variety of challenges, not the least of which is convincing the developer of the benefits of doing so.
The benefits to the developer of incorporating restoration into a development proposal include:
- greater acceptance of the project by the public and approval agencies
- using the net gain approach to obtain approvals for a project which might otherwise be unlikely to proceed
- public relations and promotional potential
- aesthetic considerations
As a biological assessment and monitoring tool BioMAP has a number of strengths. The assessment of stream or shoreline health is based on the living community, rather than a sub-set of indicator species or chemical/physical parameters. As a group, benthic invertebrates are excellent indicators of water and habitat quality because they are relatively long lived, sedentary and are subject to the full rigor of environmental stresses throughout their life cycles. BioMAP indices are sensitive to change, they exhibit little seasonal variation, and are therefore excellent tools for establishing baseline or “benchmark” conditions and monitoring trends over time. A multi-metric approach can be applied to determine the nature of factors that are acting in concert to shape the living community of the stream or shoreline.