This manual was developed as part of the Hudson River Sustainable Shorelines Project and describes simple, low-cost, representative methods for evaluating the function and integrity of ecologically enhanced shoreline projects.

A suite of information and decision-support tools for landowners, communities, and policymakers interested in leveraging the benefits of buffers is now available thanks to a two-year effort to collect and integrate information about buffer protection and management.

This tool, developed for the 2011 Hudson River Sustainable Shorelines project, can be used to provide a rough quantification of site attributes known to affect biota and ecological processes in the shore zone.