Fig. 1.

Natural, assisted, and compensatory restoration. Natural restoration or recovery (thick solid line) returns the services of the natural resource to baseline conditions (thin solid line) without the assistance of humans. Human-assisted restoration (dotted line) typically returns the services of the natural resource to baseline conditions sooner than with natural recovery. Compensatory restoration (dashed line) requires the polluter to compensate the public for the time and magnitude of the lost services caused by oil or hazardous substance spill. This often entails improving the services offered by natural resources at ecosystems near the contaminated site.