Building Effective Compensatory Marine Habitat for Arctic Ports

Installation of effective compensatory habitat is an important regulatory requirement for port projects in North America. Habitat compensation and offsetting is engineered habitat that is intended to compensate for alterations, destruction and/or disruptions of natural habitat caused by a project. The recent push for port development in the Arctic has created a need for effective and feasible compensatory habitat strategies for large-scale projects. Typical strategies utilized in temperate climates are not necessarily feasible for Arctic projects because of various environmental factors including limited biological knowledge and frequent disturbance by ice. Therefore, projects are generally limited to lower productivity compensation projects such as physical habitat construction which increases habitat complexity and diversity. Moreover, monitoring the success of Arctic compensation projects is a major challenge due to biological and logistical restrictions, such as a short growing seasons, lack of biological indicator species, temporal habitat utilization by motile species and limited access for data collection. Arctic habitat compensation projects can also be cost-prohibitive due to the remoteness of field sites and limited availability of on-site resources. This paper discusses the challenges and lessons learned from habitat compensation projects associated with recent WorleyParsons port developments in Nunavut, Canada.

• Record URL:
  https://doi.org/10.1061/9780784413067.011
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://www.asce.org/Product.aspx?ID=2147487569&ProductID=192556110
• Supplemental Notes:
  • © 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
• Corporate Authors:

  American Society of Civil Engineers

  1801 Alexander Bell Drive
  Reston, VA  United States  20191-4400
• Authors:
  • Clarke, Jason
  • Martin, Christopher
  • Wright, Stewart
• Conference:
  • Ports '13: 13th Triennial International Conference
  • Location: Seattle Washington, United States
  • Date: 2013-8-25 to 2013-8-28
• Publication Date: 2013-8

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Pagination: pp 100-108
• Monograph Title: Ports 2013: Success through Diversification

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Aquatic life; Construction; Frigid regions; Habitat (Ecology); Harbors; Lessons learned; Ports
• Geographic Terms: Arctic Regions; Nanavut (Canada); North America
• Subject Areas: Construction; Environment; Marine Transportation; Terminals and Facilities; I15: Environment; I50: Construction and Supervision of Construction;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01523262
• Record Type: Publication
• ISBN: 9780784413067
• Files: TRIS, ASCE
• Created Date: Apr 25 2014 12:04PM