Download: Estuary News, June 2013 PDF
Scientist Letitia Grenier is coordinating the 2014 update of the 1999 Baylands Ecosystem Habitat Goals. The Goals created a regional vision for restoring 100,000 acres of tidal marsh around San Francisco Bay, an acreage scientists agreed would be big enough to sustain endangered marsh species. Today, climate change and the prospect of a 2-5 foot sea level rise over the course of the next century have changed the environmental context of the Goals, and the prospect of achieving them. Not only will the water be rising, the processes influencing our wetlands will change as we experience new extremes, more frequent storms, and seasonal shifts in when the snow melts and swells runoff. Grenier has been tasked with managing the five science teams working to update the Goals. New sections will describe 
the evolution of marsh habitats under different climate change and sediment supply scenarios, the terrestrial-estuarine transition zone and the services it provides, risks to wild plants and animals, and carbon sequestration. Grenier is a biologist specializing in landscape-scale planning for restoring natural systems, not to mention a new mom, and formerly led the SF Estuary Institute’s Conservation Ecology Program. The draft goals update has been completed and the final is due out early next year.
What are your basic recommendations in Goals update?
First, we need to get better organized and be more integrated in planning and implementing the revised Goals. We will need regular meetings of agencies that have regulatory authority over how things go down so they can sort out disagreements and be more flexible with permitting projects. Second, we may need to change our policies to adjust to the changing environment. For example, we have a policy around sediment that’s based on way the system worked 20 or 50 years ago, but it’s not necessarily the right policy, environmentally, into the future. Third, we need our own “fire department” to respond to catastrophe. We know something will happen soon, probably a big flood. So our community of stakeholders needs to think through the likely scenarios, be prepared with a plan for what to do, know who to call when the disaster comes, and make sure to get invited to the emergency meetings. Then we can say, “Here’s a plan that could be cheaper for you than throwing up a sea wall, because it incorporates natural processes and is much more likely to produce a good ecological outcome.”
What’s wrong with a big sea wall?
The minute you build that big levee, you’ve got flooding problems on both sides. Big storms will not only affect the water level outside levee, but also inside, by dumping a lot of water that runs off the land and gets stuck behind the levee. From the ecological, and economic, perspective, it’s better and cheaper to have a long sloping levee, buffered by wetlands, than a seawall with deep-water next to it.
With sediment in short supply, how can we build wetlands, let alone levees?
We’ll need the bulldozers and dredges, but we also need to work with the natural forces of the planet, like streams and tides, to move the sediment where we want it to go. If we were allowing our watersheds to work the way they naturally do, instead of through dams and culverts and impermeable surfaces, they’d be delivering more sediment to wetlands, which could help them build up their elevations naturally. We also have all these erosion-control programs to prevent sediment from getting into streams, because it’s important at certain times for fish or water quality. We may need to find creative solutions. And lastly, we need to think about dredging in the Bay and in flood control channels. Sediment is sometimes dredged and dumped in place A instead of place B, because it’s cheaper. With sea level rise, we need to think of sediment as a precious resource that should be managed regionally and strategically. It should be placed in the right spots to preserve our baylands and our low-lying built up areas. We also need to think of the fresh water coming off the land or out of our wastewater pipes as it’s own precious resource. Instead of piping it out into the Bay, maybe we can put it back where it used to go, into the back of a marsh. So every decision we make around retooling an infrastructure project like a bridge, or protecting a wastewater treatment plant that will be below sea level soon, needs to incorporate solutions that think about sediment and water in a new way.
Can our endangered marsh species be as flexible as we’re trying to be?
Maybe, maybe not. One of our bet-hedging tools is to include a lot of variability in restoration projects we design. So then if you’re an animal, and something changes, you can go to a different part of the marsh. If there’s a wet year or a dry year you can stay in the zone that’s comfortable for you. Or if there are lots of different marshes around the Bay, in a good year or a bad year you can reroute yourself. Also, if you have this diverse environment out there, you’re supporting different physical variations, or phenotypes, of your animal. Then if something happens – a bottleneck in the environment, a year with this kind of food or that kind of food, then your phenotype that’s adapted to those conditions, the wetter year, the bigger nut to eat, whatever it is, that one survives. What we want is to promote the greatest genetic and phenotypic variability we can get in our wildlife populations. It’s like having a stock portfolio that’s very broad. No matter what’s up or down, you’ve got everything going on, so you’re going to make some money every year.
Is 100,000 acres of tidal marsh still the magic number?
In terms of where the Goals are going, this project is set up to figure out how to achieve the Goals in the long run. We know they could still be achievable for several decades, and we know we may have to make some big changes to achieve them for the next century. And since we still want to have our wildlife populations, and all the ecosystem services of those wetlands for those decades, our recommendation’s going to be charge on ahead, but do it wisely. Make sure to consider some of the information we’ll be providing in the update about good places to do certain kinds of things, and how to implement projects that will be resilient in the long term.
Will the Goals offer a new prescription for where to build and where to breach?
We’ve discussed where our role stops. We do want to highlight low slope areas around the edges of the Bay and river valleys where marshes can transgress. If you can find them, you should acquire them for the public and preserve them in perpetuity. But we’re not s going to tell people to make room for a setback levee in a specific location by removing houses. We’re trying to present options based on science, like: “If you take this approach you might end up with some wetlands in 2110 that might be a buffer against flooding across the Napa Valley; or if you take this approach with a sea wall, you’re going to have waves that will bounce back and forth, and actually get higher because of geometry, and you’ll have a different kind of risk of flooding behind the sea wall.”
Did we meet the 1999 goal of connecting big expanses of habitat?
We’ve made a great start, but there’s more to do. It’s always easier to get your own restoration project done than to coordinate and connect it to a bunch of other projects. With climate change, we need connectivity even more, not just for the old reasons, but also if conditions change, connected habitats give wildlife a way out. The reality of our urbanized shoreline, however, is that we’ve squeezed nature into too small a space. As sea level rises, there’s going to be this squeeze, and this squeeze is going to create more of a problem with connectivity. If we don’t achieve natural systems that are connected, we might have to expect more intervention – like active translocation or captive breeding.
Do other estuaries have Goals like we do?
Not that I know of, but other estuaries like Washington’s Puget Sound and Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay have thought through a future climate change process. There are differ ent science questions and different ecosystems, but everybody ends up with the same principles. What’s interesting in California is our really strong environmental ethos, which has also resulted in overlapping jurisdictions among our many environmental management agencies. It’s a positive and a negative. It creates a decision-making complexity that can be good, but is also takes more time, like democracy. But it’s nice, because everyone seems to have a shared goal of doing something good for the environment. I don’t get that same feeling from other places. How do you plan for climate change if you’re not allowed to use the word climate change? How do you plan for coastal protection if the government agrees they will protect everyone’s private property on a barrier beach? If you’re going to focus on saving every human structure, are there any resources left to think about doing things in a different way?
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.