Month

December 2019
05
Dec

Estuary’s Question of the Month

A fall flight over the Mexican coast where the Colorado River meets the Sea of Cortez offered me a gut-punching, eye-screwing, visual on the results of impaired flow. The semantics of ‘unimpaired’ and ‘impaired’ flow have laced the language of California water management debates since some engineer invented these politically ‘neutral’ terms long ago. The terms refer to our alteration of freshwater flows from snowmelt and runoff by dams and diversions. But whatever the labels, or whichever estuary you’re referring to, keeping these flows from reaching the sea via rivers can starve these aquatic ecosystems of their liquid life force. Whether it’s the vast yellowing salt flats that are all that remain of the mighty marshes of the pre-dam Colorado...
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SOE Conference Banner Egret
05
Dec

Good Policy, More Tests for Living Shores

While more sea walls may soon be necessary to adapt to rising seas, softer, greener, nature-based shorelines will also be important buffers for our cities and waterfronts. Wetlands, oyster reefs, eelgrass beds, and other natural features of shores and shallows figure largely in a number of ambitious, multi-partner restoration projects over the last decade. To date, more than 10 such projects have been or are being restored around the Bay, encompassing more than 200 acres of shoreline and nearshore areas. “We need larger living shoreline projects and we need them fast," said biologist Katharyn Boyer...
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05
Dec

Speakers discuss forward-looking science in a rapidly changing environment, and the neuroscience of persuading people to care about climate change.

Climate Change Planning Mark Gold made the ultimate comment in his opening plenary at the State of the Estuary Conference: “The age of incrementalism, and not moving forward in a bold way, is not getting it done in terms of climate change.” Gold, deputy secretary for ocean and coastal policy for the California Natural Resources Agency, outlined the state’s newly revised strategic plan for a bluer economy, coastal resilience, and rapid response to fisheries emergencies. Following his talk, Geeta Persad of the Union of Concerned Scientists reviewed various challenges facing California. “Climate change is going to fundamentally transform where and when California gets its water,” she said. Later, the Delta Stewardship Council’s Yumiko Henneberry asked a panel of scientists what...
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05
Dec

Flows and Ecosystem Function Dominate Delta Plan Amendment

With the Delta lagging behind the Bay on four of the State of the Estuary Report’s five indicators, the last long-range plan for restoring its ecological health abandoned, and the threats from climate change becoming ever more alarming, the need for a new regulatory vision for the region may never have been greater. A pending amendment to the Delta Plan, shared by Ron Melcer at the State of the Estuary Conference as part of a policy update session, is meant to provide that vision and the strategies to achieve it. The amendment — to Chapter Four of the Delta Plan, which focuses on the Delta ecosystem — was developed in response to the state’s pivot away from the 2013 Bay-Delta...
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05
Dec

Big Picture Review of Regional Science and Governance

Offshore, kelp forests were dwindling. Outside, hillsides were burning. Inside the Scottish Rite Center in Oakland, scientists and policy people were sharing the latest findings concerning the vital shallows in between: the San Francisco Estuary. The patient pursuit of knowledge, essential to smart action in a changing world, had chalked up a fruitful two years. Of the action itself, there was rather less sign. Felicia Marcus might speak to that better than anyone. As chair of the State Water Resources Control Board, she had coaxed along a nine-year process, mandated by law, to raise minimum flows in the major rivers that sustain the Estuary. The Board took the first of several wrenchingly hard decisions 12 months ago. Result: the process...
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05
Dec

Speakers talk about emerging water quality issues such as stormwater management, contaminants in effluent, wastewater in Suisun Marsh, and nutrients discharged into the Bay.

Green Diet for Roads City of San Pablo project manager Amanda Booth went deep into the nitty gritty on green stormwater infrastructure at a State of the Estuary Conference session. “Talk to the utility agencies before you even start,” she said. “Read PG&E’s Greenbook guidelines. Know your city’s franchise agreements with gas, electrical, sewer, and water companies, figure out who pays to relocate facilities, for example, if that becomes necessary.” Changing the flow lines of runoff at the street, parcel and regional scale is what stormwater management via green infrastructure is all about. “Regional projects that treat regional drainage are the hardest to site,” said EOA Inc’s Chris Sommer during the session. “To build large stormwater retention projects at a...
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05
Dec

Striving for Equitable Outcomes

By Audrey Mei Yi Brown Five people of color, four of whom who were women, took center stage in a full amphitheater for a 2019 State of the Estuary conference panel discussing how to achieve more equitable outcomes in both human and estuary health. Mishal Durrani, an undergraduate researcher at UC Berkeley, observed from the audience. “As a woman of color from an underrepresented community, it was powerful to see a panel with so many women of color represented.” As multi-racial as it was multidisciplinary, the diversity on the stage was striking. From community frontlines to the university to the EPA, each panelist brought expertise in equity work from a different field. Despite the diversity in their fields, it quickly...
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05
Dec

Speakers suggest communities could benefit from more green space, local knowledge, and engagement with homeless.

Green Matrix Erica Spotswood, an applied ecologist at the San Francisco Estuary Institute, has spent years studying biodiversity and its importance to ecosystems. “We have lost sight of something that is very simple but is not obvious to us now, which is that we need the same things biodiversity needs,” she said at the conference. She and other SFEI scientists are making the case for increasing biodiversity in cities, and have published a toolkit for how to do so in a recent publication, “Making Nature’s City.” At the same conference, C.N.E. Corbin, a Ph.D. candidate in environmental science at UC Berkeley, said that many cities were built to reflect the idea that cities and nature should not mix. “Historically and...
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05
Dec

Not So Picky Marsh Mouse

The endangered salt marsh harvest mouse (informally “Salty”) is a poster child for tidal marsh restoration in San Francisco Bay. But recent research, presented by University of California at Davis postdoc Katie Smith in a State of the Estuary conference session on tidal wetlands, suggests we’ve misinterpreted what the mouse needs. “It’s been managed as a habitat specialist,” she said, based on assumptions that it requires tidal wetlands and a diet of pickleweed. However, hours of mouse-tracking around the Bay show that it also thrives in managed wetlands and eats a variety of plants, including non-native species. Although restoration projects have created high-tide refuges for the mice, Smith’s preliminary data suggest other rodent species exclude them from those sites. That...
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05
Dec

Speakers discuss issues facing Estuary wildlife and their wetland habitats, as well as drones and other new tools that will help future management.

Fish and Wildlife Check-up State of the Estuary Conference presentations featuring decades of data on fish, ducks, seabirds, and cetaceans revealed both hopeful and alarming trends. “The loss of federal funding for the midwinter waterfowl survey, usually conducted using small aircraft, has researchers looking at drone-based alternatives,” said waterfowl biologist Susan De La Cruz of the US Geological Survey. The overall community condition of the Estuary’s fish (abundance, distribution, diversity, proportion of native to non-native species) has declined, reported the National Resources Defense Council’s Christina Swanson, citing the 2019 State of the Estuary Update, Bay Study and other surveys. The breeding success of California least terns and Brandt’s cormorants reflects the status of the forage fish they feed on, according...
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SOE Conference Banner Egret
05
Dec

View From the Precipice

By John Hart Scientific studies of the Bay and Delta tend to look intensely at small bits of the system. A countervailing theme at this State of the Estuary conference was the need to see wider, to “zoom out” — and most of all to help the public see the broad view, too.
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car and stormdrain picture
01
Dec

Putting Roads on a Green Diet

While trying to add bike lanes and bioretention facilities to San Pablo’s Rumrill Boulevard in the East Bay, Amanda Booth learned a central lesson. Look underground first. Booth is one of many managers around the region trying to build green stormwater infrastructure to prevent polluted runoff from draining into the Bay.
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