ORAL PRESENTATION CO-AUTHORS: Joel Hoffman, Annie Bracey, Alexis Grinde, Chris Filstrup, Kris Johnson (Natural Resources Research Institute) TITLE: Impact of Great Lakes coastal wetland restoration on seasonal bird assemblages ABSTRACT: Assessing large-scale restoration outcomes is critical for evaluating progress toward global sustainability goals, yet methods for measuring ecosystem recovery across varying spatial and temporal scales remain challenging. The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) is the leading large-scale restoration program targeting the ecological health of the Laurentian Great Lakes; since 2010, 530,000 acres of coastal wetland and nearshore habitats, as well as other habitats, have been protected and restored. Great Lakes coastal wetlands provide critical ecosystem services, including wildlife habitat, and support a diversity of bird species throughout their life histories, from migration and foraging to nesting and rearing young. However, the impact of coastal wetland restoration on bird assemblages has not yet been widely assessed in the context of GLRI. Our research goal is to investigate how coastal wetland habitat restoration activities impact bird species richness, diversity, and assemblage integrity (via functional metrics). Using indexed breeding season survey data from the GLRI-funded Coastal Wetland Monitoring Program (2011-2025), we evaluate changes in avian assemblages at more than 20 restoration sites spread throughout all five Great Lakes using a Before-After-Control-Impact (BACI) design. The analysis explicitly tests hypotheses linking changes in bird taxonomic and functional diversity to restoration activities in the context of factors such as wetland size, change in wetland vegetation quality, change in extent of open water and emergent vegetation, and time since restoration. To our knowledge, this is the first spatially extensive assessment of bird assemblage response to Great Lakes coastal wetland restoration. BIO: Isabel Dunn is a current master's student in the Water Resources Science program at University of Minnesota Duluth. Prior to graduate school, she was an Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education research participant at the Environmental Protection Agency Great Lakes National Program Office. She graduated in 2021 from UW-Stevens Point with a bachelor's degree water resources.