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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

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

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

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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13
Feb

Estuary’s Question of the Month: What is the weirdest species in the Estuary and why?

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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15
Jun

Corps Explores New Ecological Territory

A levee replacement project near the small town of Hamilton City is breaking ground as the first project that the US Army Corps of Engineers has approved based in part on potential benefits to an ecosystem. “We’ve been told this will be a national model once it’s completed,” says Lee Ann Grigsby of Hamilton City. The levee, whose original construction failed to meet modern standards, had needed to be fixed for a long time: recent estimates gave it only a 66% of withstanding a 10-year flood scenario. In 2002, new Army Corps guidelines permitted ecosystem benefits to be taken into the accounting of costs and benefits. Today, one section of the levee has been completed and restoration of the newly...
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15
Jun

Making Youth Perspectives Count Beyond Educational Exercise

“Our work is 50 percent working with young people and 50 percent working with adults to understand how they need to work with young people,” says Deborah McKoy, Executive Director of Y-Plan, an educational arm of the UC Berkeley Center for Cities + Schools. Y-Plan has partnered with Resilient by Design to create a parallel challenge eliciting youth perspectives on complex issues surrounding sea level rise. At UC Berkeley’s Alumni House, students from twelve Bay Area schools gave presentations to a panel of government representatives like Daniel Hamilton, Oakland’s Sustainability Manager. He feels that kids can actually be easier to work with than adults: “Local government tends to operate in silos, but big issues like climate are silo-busting. Kids do...
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13
Jun

Two-Way Bay: Estuary Leaders Reflect on Resilience

This 8-minute film interviews eight directors of water quality, restoration, and environmental programs around the San Francisco Estuary about their experience of the 2017-2018 Resilient by Design Bay Area Challenge.
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11
Jun

Slideshow: Resilient by Design Bay Area Challenge

Some things just aren’t big enough in print or pdf! In this short slide show we offer a sample of the richness of the renderings, big ideas, and technical thinking emerging from the Resilient by Design Bay Area Challenge. From hyper-creeks to treatment marshes to accretion gardens, this slide show also gives you a look at a few things buried in the final reports.
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02
May

And Also…

In the Fate of the Delta Smelt, Warnings of Conservation Gone Wrong New Study Improves Measurement of Crop Water Use in the Delta Accidents Waiting to Happen: Coal Ash Ponds Put Our Waterways at Risk
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20
Mar

Photo Essay: Sailing, A Dying Sport or Character Builder?

Around the Bay, people who love to sail are sharing the sport with young people. Tucked into marinas and coves, and working out of portable classrooms and small offices, yacht club volunteers and nonprofit staff are working hard to get youth out on the bay in sailboats. They don’t expect to make sailors out of the kids but they do believe that getting a kid on the water, even for a few hours, has value. They know that being on a boat pushed through the water by wind teaches science and math; builds camaraderie, confidence, and teamwork; inspires environmental stewardship; and encourages the habit of saying “yes” to life. “I enjoy sailing because it’s a sport that challenges you mentally...
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18
Mar

Locals Trade Vines for Resilient Rivers

In 2002, when stretches of the Napa River running through Rutherford area vineyards breached levees and flooded yet again, Michael Honig did something remarkable: rather than call the authorities to complain, his neighbors and he banded together to restore their riverbanks. “It had became a kind of competition,” Honig says.
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07
Feb

And also…

Nearly Half of California’s Vegetation at Risk From Climate Stress https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/nearly-half-california-vegetation-risk-climate-stress USACE Releases Yuba River Floodplain Restoration Plan http://www.spk.usace.army.mil/Missions/Environmental-Projects/Yuba-River-Eco-Study/ http://www.chicoer.com/general-news/20180108/feds-release-yuba-river-floodplain-restoration-plan Report Recommends Adding 37 Miles of the Mokelumne to Wild and Scenic River System https://mavensnotebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/AB-142-study-NR_joint.pdf Contributors: Joe Eaton, Robin Meadows, Ariel Rubissow Okamoto, Nate Seltenrich, Cariad Hayes Thronson
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special issues collage
01
Jan

Editor’s Pick Special Issues

In recent years, Estuary News produced a number of special issues dedicated to central topics ranging from fish to restoration to Delta science and climate adaptation. These issues come together especially beautifully in PDF formats, where the relationships between stories and silos begin to emerge.
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01
Jan

Editor’s Pick Water Supply Stories 1993-2013

Walk back through time with this selection of early stories from Estuary's first two decades of publication. Stories cover everything from fish kills at the pumps to struggles managing the "X2" salinity standard and the environmental water account.
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01
Jan

Editor’s Pick Smelt Stories 1993-2013

Walk back through time with this selection of early stories from Estuary's first two decades of publication. In those days, the smelt was at the center of lawsuits, regulatory battles, and debates over recovery criteria under the ESA. Little has changed, except there are now far fewer smelt.
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restoration collage
01
Jan

Editor’s Pick Restoration Stories 1993-2013

Walk back through time with this sampling of early stories from Estuary's first two decades of publication. Many stories of the day focused on rescuing creeks and rivers from culverts and rip rap, restoring diked or farmed wetlands, and experimenting with techniques to bring native species back to altered landscapes.
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collage stormwater stories
01
Jan

Editor’s Pick Stormwater Stories 1993-2013

Walk back through time with this selection of early stories from Estuary's first two decades of publication. Stories explore fledgling efforts to monitor, filter and curb stormwater pollution, ranging from rain gardens to vehicle registration fees.
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