Cultural ecosystem services (CES), one of four main categories of ecosystem services, are often described as the non-material benefits that humans receive from their interactions with the environment.

The Habitat Heartbeats project is developing a monitoring system to integrate living organisms such as oysters and mussels ("biosentinels”) with existing monitoring efforts.

The Habitat Heartbeats project was featured during the 2023 virtual symposium showcasing recent scientific studies related to the restoration and health of San Diego estuaries including the Tijuana River Estuary, San Diego Bay, and Los Peñasquitos Lagoon.

Poster: Drones can revolutionize research and monitoring…can’t they? (NERRS/NERRA Annual Meeting 2020)

Project Lead Brandon Puckett (North Carolina National Estuarine Research Reserve) gives an introduction to "Bridging the Gap between Quadrats and Satellites: Assessing Utility of Drone-based Imagery to Enhance Emergent Vegetation Biomonitoring," aka "Drone the SWMP," a catalyst project funded in

Research staff from 12 reserves assessed sensor performance by comparing field and laboratory sensor measurements to concentrations of chlorophyll extracted from water samples.