Monitoring represents a critical component of an adaptive management cycle. For the 2016 Estuary Blueprint, our monitoring approach includes two primary components: 1) linking environmental outcomes in the Estuary Blueprint to the State of the Estuary Report, and 2) linking programmatic success, or outputs, through implementation of tasks with clear milestones distributed throughout the five-year implementation horizon of the Estuary Blueprint.
The following charts record progress toward the completion of very specific actions which are enumerated and described in the Estuary Blueprint. These charts will be routinely updated over time as we collectively fulfill the attendant goals.
Action 1: Develop and implement a comprehensive, watershed-scale approach to aquatic resource protection
1
Action 2: Establish a regional wetland and stream monitoring program
2
Action 3: Protect, restore and enhance tidal marsh and tidal flat habitat
3
Action 4: Identify, protect, and create transition zones around the Estuary
4
Action 5: Protect, restore, and enhance intertidal and subtidal habitats
5
Action 6: Maximize habitat benefits of managed wetlands and ponds
6
Action 7: Conserve and enhance riparian and in-stream habitats throughout the Estuary's watersheds
7
Action 8: Protect, restore, and enhance seasonal wetlands
8
Action 9: Minimize the impact of invasive species
9
Action 10: Increase the efficacy of predator management
10
Action 11: Increase carbon sequestration through wetland restoration, creation, and management
11
Action 12: Restore watershed connections to the Estuary to improve habitat, flood protection and water quality
12
Action 13: Manage sediment on a regional scale and advance beneficial reuse
13
Action 14: Demonstrate how natural habitats and nature-based shoreline infrastructure can provide increased resiliency to changes in the Estuary environment.
14
Action 15: Advance natural resource protection while increasing resiliency of shoreline communities in the Bay Area
15
Action 16: Integrate natural resource protection into state and local government hazard mitigation, response, and recovery planning
16
Action 17: Improve regulatory review, permitting, and monitoring processes for multi-benefit climate adaptation projects
17
Action 18: Improve the timing, amount, and duration of freshwater flows critical to Estuary health
18
Action 19: Develop long-term drought plans
19
Action 20: Increase regional agricultural water use efficiency
20
Action 21: Reduce water use for landscaping around the Estuary
21
Action 22: Expand the use of recycled water
22
Action 23: Integrate water into the updated Plan Bay Area and other regional planning efforts
23
Action 24: Manage stormwater with low impact development and green infrastructure
24
Action 25: Address emerging contaminants
25
Action 26: Decrease raw sewage discharges into the Estuary
26
Action 27: Implement Total Maximum Daily Load projects in the Estuary, including projects to reduce mercury, methylmercury, pesticides and areas of low dissolved oxygen
27
Action 28: Advance nutrient management in the Estuary
28
Action 29: Engage the scientific community in efforts to improve baseline monitoring of ocean acidification and hypoxia effects in the Estuary.
29
Action 30: Reduce trash input into the Estuary
30
Action 31: Foster support for resource protection and restoration by providing Estuary-oriented public access and recreational opportunities compatible with wildlife
31
Action 32: Champion and implement the CCMP
32
Progress Tracker:
Use this table to track the progress of each task that implements one of the 32 actions.
NO
Hothouse Earth
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.”
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.