The resources presented here complement the information in our Stronger, Safer Shorelines brochure (right). This information is designed for local government officials and staff people who want to learn more about planning for, tracking, and implementing multi-benefit, nature-based solutions to increase resilience to climate change for communities around the San Francisco Estuary.
Click to read the brochure and then explore the tabs below for more resources and exemplary case studies.
This project advances the following Estuary Blueprint goals and actions
Goals Champion the Estuary
Actions Action 15
Resources
Planning
Data and Research
Case Studies
Incorporating the anticipated impacts of climate change into planning efforts can help protect essential infrastructure and strengthen the region. Before creating or updating plans for your community, you may wish to review the following regional planning documents:
Comprehensive Conservation Management Plan (CCMP) The CCMP, originally published in 1993 by the San Francisco Estuary Partnership, was the first master plan for improving the health of the estuary encompassing the San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The objectives of the plan are to sustain and improve habitats and living resources, improve water quality and increase water quantity, increase resiliency to sustain functions in the face of climate change, and champion the estuary through public understanding and stewardship. Learn more.
Plan Bay Area Plan Bay Area is a long-range integrated transportation and land-use/housing strategy for the San Francisco Bay Area through 2040. All major metropolitan areas in California are required to develop a sustainable communities strategy, linking housing, transportation, and land use, to meet the carbon dioxide–reducing goals of SB 375. The plan promotes compact, mixed-use development that is walkable, bikeable, and close to public transit, jobs, schools, shopping, parks, and other amenities. Learn more.
Adapting to Rising Tides Initiated by the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC), Adapting to Rising Tides (ART) leads and supports multi-sector, cross-jurisdictional efforts to build local and regional capacity to plan for and implement adaptation responses in the Bay Area. The Alameda County Subregional ART Project applies collaborative adaptation planning to identify how flooding will affect the Alameda County shoreline. Learn more.
Transportation 2035 This plan, which was a joint regional planning effort spearheaded by the Metropolitan Transportation Council (MTC), promotes future growth near transit throughout the Bay Area. The plan sets eight transportation goals for the Bay Area, including climate protection. Learn more.
Resilience Program The Associated Bay Area Governments (ABAG) is providing assistance to a select number of cities to develop policies for hazard mitigation or resilience planning, per the 2010 Local Hazard Mitigation Plan or Climate Adaptation Plan. Under this program, ABAG will provide assistance in planning for and implementing mitigation projects with the goals of ensuring that mitigation activities are regionally coordinated, are implemented in an impactful way, and are not financially overburdening any given jurisdiction. Learn more.
A number of tools have been developed for use by land managers and governments to consider the impacts of climate change on their project or community. Some useful resources include:
Sea Level Rise Threatened Areas Map This interactive map shows land vulnerable to a 100-year flood event and includes the San Francisco Bay and coastal land from Half Moon Bay to Bodega Bay. This Coastal Storm Modelling System (CoSMos) model, developed by the US Geological Survey (USGS), represents sea level rise and storm events, and accounts for physical structures, wave dynamics, coastal erosion, and other factors. Learn more.
Sea Level Rise and Coastal Flooding Impacts Map This map viewer, developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, provides interactive visualizations that demonstrate the scale of potential sea level rise and coastal flooding impacts. Learn more.
SF Bay Shore Inventory (GIS Dataset) A collaborative effort between the San Francisco Estuary Institute, SFEP, and regional planning agencies, this inventory provides data about the shoreline of the Bay, including features that affect flooding and flood routing (engineered levees, berms, embankments, roads, wetlands, etc.), features fronted by wetlands and beaches, and features that are artificially hardened. Learn more.
Leveraging the region’s wealth of experts, funding, and political assets necessary to implement successful resilience projects can help your community achieve multiple goals and support the overall health and safety of the estuary.
Oro Loma: Horizontal Levee This project, located on a 10-acre field next to the Oro Loma Sanitary District’s San Lorenzo wastewater treatment plant, uses a horizontal levee, which mimics the natural slope of historic wetlands, takes in treated water from the Oro Loma facility at the top of the horizontal levee, and lets water flow through the soil to sustain and be treated by native plants. Learn more.
Yosemite Slough: Restoring Wetlands This ambitious restoration project at the mouth of Yosemite Creek in San Francisco will add 12 acres of tidal wetlands and remove contaminated soils from upland areas, while improving habitat for special-status species and developing a nesting island along the shoreline.Learn more.
South Bay Salt Ponds: Monitoring Restoration The South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project is the largest tidal wetland restoration project on the west coast. When complete, more than 15,000 acres of commercial salt ponds will be restored to tidal marsh, mudflat, and other wetland habitat. Learn more.
Living Shorelines Project Description: This multi objective habitat restoration project utilized a number of habitat restoration techniques in a living shorelines approach to enhance and protect physical and biological resources of the coasts of San Rafael and Hayward. The project constructed pilot native Olympia oyster reefs and eelgrass beds that provide habitat for a wide diversity of native species, and are positively influencing physical processes such as wave attenuation that can buffer and protect shorelines in the face of sea level rise and other impacts of climate change.Learn more.
Flood Control 2.0 This project is a regional effort aimed at helping restore stream and wetland habitats, water quality, and shoreline resilience around San Francisco Bay. It used resources from several flood control agencies to redesign major flood control channels to provide both future flood conveyance and ecological resilience to climate change.Learn more.
Bahia Marsh Restoration A multi-partner effort at the Marin County bayshore is returning salt marsh vegetation and endangered species to an area that was wetlands in the past. Learn more.
Reusing Dredge Materials for Habitat Dredging in the Bay is essential for shipping. The Long-Term Management Strategy for dredge materials encourages beneficial reuse of dredged material, as in wetlands restoration. A new collaborative program to increase reuse of dredged sediment at habitat restoration sites has been developed and can be found online! Click to Learn more.
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. Suess 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.”
4th California Climate Change Assessment Blues
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.