Few restoration efforts anywhere rival the South Bay Salt Pond Project in scope, expense, or complexity. “We’re celebrating the tenth anniversary this year,” said Project Manager John Bourgeois, who heads the multi-agency collaboration. Bourgeois is responsible for transforming a Manhattan-sized expanse of former salt production ponds and other wetlands, much of it acquired from the Cargill Salt Company in 2003. Restoration here isn’t just a matter of breaching the dikes and letting the Bay in. “There are tradeoffs,” Bourgeois explained. “The salt ponds have been here for 150 years, and a suite of species has utilized them. In restoration, we’re taking away habitat for certain species and giving it to others. On a landscape scale, we need to ensure we’re not doing more harm than good.” One example is the endangered snowy plover (Charadrius nivosus), which prefers to nest in the moonscapes of the salt pannes. Project scientists have also detected increased mercury concentrations in the eggs of fish-eating birds.
Adaptive management will be necessary as the process advances. “At minimum, the goal is to get to 50 percent tidal marsh,” Bourgeois added, although the ultimate proportion could be as high as 90 percent. “In Phase 1 we picked the low-hanging fruit and got some of the easy projects done: taking down levees, letting natural processes back in. We’ve been pretty successful so far; the sedimentation rate is exceeding expectations, and the revegetation rate has been rapid.” Eight of nine Phase 1 projects have been completed. “We’re doing certain things that don’t look like natural ecosystems, building in a robust capacity to manage water, and experimentally constructing nesting islands for birds.” By next year, Bourgeois said, 3,750 acres will have been restored: “We’re trying to move rapidly in the face of sea level rise and get as much tidal marsh restored as we can.” To date, the project has cost $190 million, mostly allocated for land acquisition. “Funding will be a challenge moving forward,” he acknowledged. “To get from here to 50 percent tidal marsh, we need money. To get to 90 percent, we need money and science. We need to understand more about sediment dynamics and how wildlife uses the restored areas. With state bond money and federal appropriations drying up, we need new sources, especially to fund the science program.”
In the North Bay, meanwhile, the Department of Fish and Wildlife, Ducks Unlimited (DU), and other government, nonprofit, and private-sector partners have been engaged in another ambitious project. “It’s been called a national model for restoration,” said DU’s Renee Spenst. Restoration efforts began when the state acquired nearly 10,000 acres of former Cargill salt production ponds in Napa and Sonoma counties in the early 1990s. To date, 5,000 acres have been restored, another 2,000 enhanced. Challenges included handling the concentrated brine at the 1,360-acre Napa Plant Site, the thick salt crust on crystallizer beds, land subsidence, and the need to work around existing infrastructure such as Highway 37, railroad and power lines. Work on the Napa Plant Site culminated in 2010 with the South Unit breach. Spenst reported gratifying responses from wildlife. “The Plant Site is now excellent habitat for ducks,” she said. Shorebirds flocked to the restored ponds, and the endangered California least tern (Sterna antillarium browni) began nesting in 2009. Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), steelhead (O. mykiss), and Sacramento splittail (Pogonichthys macrolepidotus) are also using the new habitat: “It’s surprising how quickly fish are coming into the site.” Uncertainties remain, notably funding. “Monitoring is a continued challenge—how to monitor meaningfully, feeding back into the project as we move forward,” Spenst noted. She also stressed the need to connect areas of good wetland habitat, provide upland space that will enhance resilience to sea level rise, and develop better incentives for reusing sediment.
While engineers contended with toxic brine in Napa, those working on Hamilton Field wrestled with tarmac. “We left the runway in place and put mud on top of it,” said Tom Gandesbery of the California Coastal Conservancy, the sponsoring agency. “It would have been too expensive to remove.” As it was, converting the former military air base into a wetland took “money, time, and a lot of hard work.” After being diked, drained, farmed, and used as an airfield, the site had subsided six feet below sea level. Fixing that provided a showcase for the beneficial reuse of dredged material under the Long Term Management Strategy. The US Army Corps of Engineers provided 5.6 million cubic yards of clean sediment from the deepening of Oakland Harbor, pumped to the site through a pipeline under San Pablo Bay from an electric powered offloader 5.5 miles offshore. “It was powered by the world’s longest extension cord,” Gandesbery joked. When completed next year with the breach of a bayside levee, Hamilton will feature tidal and seasonal wetlands, an upland transition zone, and wildlife migration corridors. The Coastal Conservancy is also building 2.7 miles of public trail at Hamilton, a future segment of the Bay Trail system. An on-site nursery grows native plants destined for the seasonal wetlands and transition zone. Some have been put into the ground already by volunteers: “It’s a great way to get the local community to take ownership of the project,” Gandesbery said. Next, the Conservancy will take on Bel Marin Keys north of Hamilton, which will require a different approach. “There are many more restoration sites than we have mud for,” Gandesbery explained. “With 2 million cubic yards per year dredged in the whole bay, there’s not enough to go around. The Oakland deepening project is done and there are no other big projects on the horizon.” One long-term solution may be stockpiling dredged material at an underwater drop-off spot, which would decouple offloading and pumping from the dredging process.
Scaling down from those three megaprojects, Katharyn Boyer of San Francisco State University’s Romberg Tiburon Center described the work of the San Francisco Bay Living Shorelines Project at two smaller test sites. Her group is using two native species, Olympia oyster (Ostrea lurida) and eelgrass (Zostera marina), in experiments that may help restore lost ecological functions and build a more resilient Estuary. The Living Shorelines concept, which was pioneered on the East and Gulf Coasts, involves providing living spaces for organisms that will protect the shoreline from increased storm surge and other consequences of climate change. “Oysters create a heterogeneous reef space that allows other organisms to come. Eelgrass traps sediment, reduces erosion, sequesters carbon builds habitat and provides foraging areas for other organisms,” Boyer said. Off San Rafael, Boyer installed a mix of oyster-only, eelgrass-only, combination, and control plots. Structures made out of “baycrete”—Portland cement mixed with oyster shell and sand—and shaped into reef balls, blocks that interlock “like Legos,” provide settlement sites for planktonic oyster larvae, as do shell-bag mounds. At Eden Landing near Hayward, eelgrass collected at nearby sites has been planted and shell mounds created for the oysters. After a year, over 2 million oysters have settled on the San Rafael mounds alone: “It’s wall-to-wall oysters out there,” Boyer said. Shellfish weren’t the only species drawn to the settling surfaces; crabs, sea slugs, anadromous fish, and birds, including the locally uncommon black oystercatcher (Haematopus bachmani) showed up, too. “There’s so much life on these reefs,” Boyer said. Her team is also tracking changes in wave energy and sedimentation. At Eden Landing, oyster recruitment has been low, possibly impacted by the predatory Atlantic oyster drill snail (Urosalpinx cinerea), but eelgrass has established well. Both sites will be monitored through 2017.
Hamilton Restoration
Napa-Sonoma Marshes
Living Shorelines
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NEXT ARTICLE: Mice and Sculpins Scope Out New Habitat
By Ariel Rubissow Okamoto
Nothing could be stranger than sitting in the dark with thousands of suits and heels, watching a parade of promises to decarbonize from companies and countries large and small, reeling from the beauties of big screen rainforests and indigenous necklaces, and getting all choked up.
It was day two of the September 2018 Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco when I felt it.
At first I wondered if I was simply starstruck. Most of us labor away trying to fix one small corner of the planet or another without seeing the likes of Harrison Ford, Al Gore, Michael Bloomberg, Van Jones, Jerry Brown – or the ministers or mayors of dozens of cities and countries – in person, on stage and at times angry enough to spit. And between these luminaries a steady stream of CEOs, corporate sustainability officers, and pension fund managers promising percentages of renewables and profits in their portfolios dedicated to the climate cause by 2020-2050.
I tried to give every speaker my full attention: the young man of Vuntut Gwichin heritage from the edge of the Yukon’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge who pleaded with us not to enter his sacred lands with our drills and dependencies; all the women – swathed in bright patterns and head-scarfs – who kept punching their hearts. “My uncle in Uganda would take 129 years to emit the same amount of carbon as an American would in one year,” said Oxfam’s Winnie Byanyima.
“Our janitors are shutting off the lights you leave on,” said Aida Cardenas, speaking about the frontline workers she trains, mostly immigrants, who are excited to be part of climate change solutions in their new country.
The men on the stage, strutting about in feathers and pinstripes, spoke of hopes and dreams, money and power. “The notion that you can either do good or do well is a myth we have to collectively bust,” said New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy whose state is investing heavily in offshore wind farms.
“Climate change isn’t just about risks, it’s about opportunities,” said Blackrock sustainable investment manager Brian Deese.
But it wasn’t all these fine speeches that started the butterflies. Halfway through the second day of testimonials, it was a slight white-haired woman wrapped in an azure pashmina that pricked my tears. One minute she was on the silver screen with Alec Baldwin and the next she taking a seat on stage. She talked about trees. How trees can solve 30% of our carbon reduction problem. How we have to stop whacking them back in the Amazon and start planting them everywhere else. I couldn’t help thinking of Dr. Seuss and his truffala trees. Jane Goodall, over 80, is as fierce as my Lorax. Or my daughter’s Avatar.
Analyzing my take home feeling from the event I realized it wasn’t the usual fear – killer storms, tidal waves, no food for my kids to eat on a half-baked planet – nor a newfound sense of hope – I’ve always thought nature will get along just fine without us. What I felt was relief. People were actually doing something. Doing a lot. And there was so much more we could do.
As we all pumped fists in the dark, as the presentations went on and on and on because so many people and businesses and countries wanted to STEP UP, I realized how swayed I had let myself be by the doomsday news mill.
“We must be like the river, “ said a boy from Bangladesh named Risalat Khan, who had noticed our Sierra watersheds from the plane. “We must cut through the mountain of obstacles. Let’s be the river!”
Or as Harrison Ford less poetically put it: “Let’s turn off our phones and roll up our sleeves and kick this monster’s ass.”
by Isaac Pearlman
Since California’s last state-led climate change assessment in 2012, the Golden State has experienced a litany of natural disasters. This includes four years of severe drought from 2012 to 2016, an almost non-existent Sierra Nevada snowpack in 2014-2015 costing $2.1 billion in economic losses, widespread Bay Area flooding from winter 2017 storms, and extremely large and damaging wildfires culminating with this year’s Mendocino Complex fire achieving the dubious distinction of the largest in state history. California’s most recent climate assessment, released August 27th, predicts that for the state and the Bay Area, we can expect even more in the future.
The California state government first began assessing climate impacts formally in 2006, due to an executive order by Governor Schwarzenegger. California’s latest iteration and its fourth overall, includes a dizzying array of 44 technical reports; three topical studies on climate justice, tribal and indigenous communities, and the coast and ocean; as well as nine region-specific analyses.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.
For the first time, California’s latest assessment dives into climate consequences on a regional level. Academics representing nine California regions spearheaded research and summarized the best available science on the variable heat, rain, flooding and extreme event consequences for their areas. For example, the highest local rate of sea level rise in the state is at the rapidly subsiding Humboldt Bay. In San Diego county, the most biodiverse in all of California, preserving its many fragile and endangered species is an urgent priority. Francesca Hopkins from UC Riverside found that the highest rate of childhood asthma in the state isn’t an urban smog-filled city but in the Imperial Valley, where toxic dust from Salton Sea disaster chokes communities – and will only become worse as higher temperatures and less water due to climate change dry and brittle the area.
According to the Bay Area Regional Report, since 1950 the Bay Area has already increased in temperature by 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit and local sea level is eight inches higher than it was one hundred years ago. Future climate will render the Bay Area less suitable for our evergreen redwood and fir forests, and more favorable for tolerant chaparral shrub land. The region’s seven million people and $750 billion economy (almost one-third of California’s total) is predicted to be increasingly beset by more “boom and bust” irregular wet and very dry years, punctuated by increasingly intense and damaging storms.
Unsurprisingly, according to the report the Bay Area’s intensifying housing and equity problems have a multiplier affect with climate change. As Bay Area housing spreads further north, south, and inland the result is higher transportation and energy needs for those with the fewest resources available to afford them; and acute disparity in climate vulnerability across Bay Area communities and populations.
“All Californians will likely endure more illness and be at greater risk of early death because of climate change,” bluntly states the statewide summary brochure for California’s climate assessment. “[However] vulnerable populations that already experience the greatest adverse health impacts will be disproportionately affected.”
“We’re much better at being reactive to a disaster than planning ahead,” said UC Berkeley professor and contributing author David Ackerly at a California Adaptation Forum panel in Sacramento on August 27th. “And it is vulnerable communities that suffer from those disasters. How much human suffering has to happen before it triggers the next round of activity?”
The assessment’s data is publicly available online at “Cal-adapt,” where Californians can explore projected impacts for their neighborhoods, towns, and regions.