Wetland Restoration Calculator

This calculator builds a restoration budget from a base cost per acre that varies by wetland type — cheapest for freshwater marsh ($8,000/acre), most expensive for coastal salt marsh ($25,000/acre) — then multiplies by a degradation factor (light degradation costs only 70% of the moderate baseline, severe degradation costs 150%) and adds two optional cost items: hydrology restoration (ditch plugging, berm removal) at a flat $5,000/acre if the site's water flow needs correcting, and planting, which costs far more for active nursery-stock planting ($3,000/acre) than for letting the site naturally revegetate ($500/acre). Beyond cost, it scores four ecological benefits on a 0–100 scale and averages them into an overall score: water filtration (higher for marsh and riparian types), flood control (scales with acreage — bigger wetlands store more floodwater), carbon sequestration (highest for peatland, which also has the highest per-acre carbon rate at 6.0 tCO2e/year), and biodiversity (highest for coastal salt marsh). Annual ecosystem-services value combines a $30/ton carbon price, an estimate of water filtration value, and flat allowances for recreation and flood-damage avoidance, and dividing total cost by that annual value gives a rough payback period.

Time to full ecological function ranges from 3 years for freshwater marsh up to 15 years for peatland, and stretches 50% longer if the site started severely degraded. These are planning-level estimates built on typical national averages — actual wetland restoration costs and outcomes depend heavily on regional labor rates, permitting, and site-specific hydrology.