San Francisco Bay Joint Venture

A partnership working to protect, restore, increase, and enhance wetland habitats
throughout the San Francisco Bay region to benefit birds, fish, and other wildlife

Sediment for Survival
Lead Agency: San Francisco Estuary Institute
Release Date: April 2021

This report provides future bayland sediment demand and sediment supply estimates under a changing climate and highlights management approaches needed for supporting long-term bayland resilience.

Resource Document: Sediment for Survival 042121 REDUCED.pdf

Palomarin Field Station Data Explorer
Lead Agency: Point Blue Conservation Science
Release Date: July 2020

This is a science communication and education tool meant to be a high-level way for anyone to explore some of the data, long-term research, and importance of long term bird conservation being conducted at the Point Blue Field station out in West Marin. It's also a way for researchers to see the kinds of data available for research collaborations.

Science Program Framework - South Bay Salt Pond Project
Lead Agency: South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project and Point Blue Conservation Science
Release Date: June 2020

This Science Program Framework (Framework) provides a transparent, rational approach for identifying and implementing the most relevant science to inform restoration and management decisions in pursuit of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project’s (Project) mission, which is the restoration and enhancement of wetlands in the South San Francisco Bay while providing for flood risk management and wildlife-oriented public access and recreation.

Resource Document: PointBlue_SBSP Science Framework_FINAL_Jun2020.pdf

Laguna de Santa Rosa Master Restoration Plan
Lead Agency: San Francisco Estuary Institute with partners at the Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation, and funded by Sonoma Water and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife
Release Date: May 2020

The Laguna de Santa Rosa is an expansive freshwater wetland complex that hosts a rich diversity of plant and wildlife species, and is also home to a thriving agricultural community. Since the mid-19th century, modifications to the Laguna and its surrounding landscape have degraded habitat conditions for both wildlife and people. Together with partners at the Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation, and funded by Sonoma Water and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the goal of the Laguna de Santa Rosa Master Restoration Plan project is to develop a plan that supports ecosystem services in the Laguna—through the restoration and enhancement of landscape processes that form and sustain habitats and improve water quality—while considering flood management issues and the productivity of agricultural lands. The report details a long-term vision for the landscape which highlights opportunities for multi-benefit habitat restoration and land management within the Laguna’s 100-year floodplain.

San Francisco Bay Conservation Strategy
Lead Agency: Audubon California
Release Date: May 2020

The focus on this new strategy is to promote potentially new projects and funding to restore degraded wetlands around SF Bay that are at the intersection of important habitat for birds and communities at risk that are being most impacted by coastal flooding.

Resource Document: Audubon - San Francisco Bay Conservation Strategy.pdf

Sonoma Creek Baylands Strategy
Lead Agency: Sonoma Land Trust
Release Date: May 2020

The Sonoma Creek Baylands Strategy (Strategy) builds on the recommendations of the 2012 study and provides a plan for landscape-scale restoration, flood protection, and public access in the Sonoma Creek Baylands. It also provides recommendations for the State Route (SR) 37 redesign project and the SMART rail line.

Marin County Sea Level Rise Adaptation Framework released
Lead Agency: San Francisco Estuary Institute, Point Blue Conservation Science, and the County of Marin
Release Date: September 2019

The framework helps planners determine which nature-based measures are suitable given specific site conditions and desired outcomes, and offers an approach for transparently considering multiple benefits to evaluate trade-offs among strategies. Nature-based solutions to sea-level rise include measures like restoring coarse beaches to reduce wave energy, conserving and restoring wetlands that can act as buffers, and preparing “migration spaces” that marshes can transition into as sea level rises.

West Coast Estuary Viewer
Lead Agency: Pacific Marine Estuary Partnership
Release Date: August 2019

This map viewer highlights spatial data products developed to characterize habitats and synthesize information in support of habitat conservation and restoration goal setting. The report highlights forgotten estuary acreage that might now be targeted for restoration.

Bay Shoreline Flood Explorer
Lead Agency: Bay Conservation and development Commission
Release Date: August 2018

The Flood Explorer and associated flood maps are intended to be used as a planning guide to understand where our shoreline is at risk from current and future flooding from sea level rise and storms.

Integrating Nature into the Urban Landscape
Lead Agency: H. T. Harvey & Associates and Google Ecology Program
Release Date: April 2018

This document was authored by H. T. Harvey & Associates, funded by Google�s Ecology Program, and incorporates input from a wide variety of local environmental groups. The guidelines are intended to promote and guide urban habitat creation in areas throughout the South San Francisco Bay region, where the creation of urban habitat would restore some of the ecosystem features that have been lost through development. The focus of this document is on the selection and installation of appropriate native plants that can support local wildlife, improve water quality, and provide urban shade, among other environmental benefits.

Mapping the Transition Zone Integrating the Upper Boundary and Bay Margin Methods
Lead Agency: San Francisco Estuary Partnership
Release Date: October 2017

This report seeks to explain the differences and similarities between two mapping approaches and lay the groundwork for a common methodology for when and how to use these approaches in a comprehensive manner as related to identifying, protecting and creating upland transition zones (UTZ) around the Estuary.

Sea Level Rise Viewer
Lead Agency: NOAA
Release Date: July 2017

Use this web mapping tool to visualize community-level impacts from coastal flooding or sea level rise (up to 6 feet above average high tides). Photo simulations of how future flooding might impact local landmarks are also provided, as well as data related to water depth, connectivity, flood frequency, socio-economic vulnerability, wetland loss and migration, and mapping confidence.

Bay Area Greenprint
Lead Agency: The Nature Conservancy, Bay Area Open Space Council and others
Release Date: June 2017

The Bay Area Greenprint brings together a wide range of data to help you discover and highlight many potential benefits from the non-built environment, across a range of themes: Biodiversity & Habitat, Agriculture, Water, Carbon, and Recreation. Especially designed for city planners, project managers and any who might benefit from having/using a meaningful interpretation of Natural Resource Accounting

DredgeFest California Key Findings and Recommendations
Lead Agency: Dredge Research Collaborative
Release Date: December 2016

These Findings and Recommendations have been synthesized from the work of DredgeFest California, a week-long event held in the Bay Area in July 2016. They draw on the work done by five teams across five days of design workshops, discussions with many different experts, two days in the field and background research conducted by the Dredge Research Collaborative prior to the event. Each recommendation summarizes a key principle intended to guide the design, planning, and management of sediment in the Bay-Delta.

Pacific Americas Shorebird Conservation Strategy
Lead Agency: US Shorebird Conservation Partnership
Release Date: December 2016

The Pacific Americas Shorebird Conservation Strategy involved a highly collaborative team of over 50 unique institutions (see pgs. 4-5 for the lengthy list), and is meant to enable partners working throughout the Flyway (North, Central, & South America) to sustain shorebird populations for present and future generations.

Comprehensive Conservation Management Plan
Lead Agency: San Francisco Estuary Partnership
Release Date: September 2016

The Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan for the San Francisco Estuary (the Estuary Blueprint) provides 32 priority actions over the next five years for achieving a healthier Bay and Delta. The result of the collaboration of over 100 scientists, regulators, businesses, municipalities, non-governmental organizations, and citizens, this Estuary Blueprint reflects the consensus of government agencies and non-profits concerned with the health of the Estuary. The actions in this plan take a comprehensive look at the needs of the Estuary, from increasing freshwater flowing through the system and providing space for habitats and species, to connections to watersheds, greener urban spaces, and more resilient communities, among many other needs. The plan doesn�t shy away from the more formidable challenges facing the region: it calls for broader implementation of nature-based solutions, improvements in regulatory review, permitting, and monitoring processes, and integration of natural resource protection into hazard planning. Aggressive and immediate implementation of innovations like these will be necessary to ensure a healthy, sustainable future for the San Francisco Estuary.

Herbicide Best Management Practices for Wildland Stewardship
Lead Agency: California Invasive Plant Council
Release Date: February 2016

Protecting wildlife habitat often requires controlling invasive plants, and those conducting invasive plant removal need to be sure their approach is safe for wildlife. This manual of Best Management Practices presents ways land managers can protect wildlife when using herbicides to control invasive plants. (While any invasive plant removal approach can potentially affect wildlife, chemical control methods are the focus of this report.) Herbicides are an important tool in the IPM (Integrated Pest Management) toolbox for controlling wildland weeds. Toxicology information is presented on herbicides most commonly used for invasive plant management in California natural areas. The BMPs are drawn from methods used by experienced land managers. Along with providing guidance for land managers, this document is designed to inform the interested public about how herbicides are used to control invasive plants in natural areas. The manual is available for free download. You will be asked for some basic information for tracking purposes.

Online Flood Map for Sea Level Rise and Storms
Lead Agency: Our Coasts, Our Future
Release Date: August 2014

Summary: Our Coast, Our Future provides Bay Area coastal managers and planners a locally relevant, online map and associated data and tools to help understand, visualize, and anticipate vulnerabilities to sea level rise and storms over the next century and beyond. Questions related to restoration, climate adaptation, natural resource management, municipal, and infrastructure maintenance plans can all be addressed using the localized projections easily accessed through our website. You must register to use the mapping feature.

Climate-Smart Restoration Toolkit: Tools for Preparing Restoration Projects for Climate Change
Lead Agency: Point Blue Conservation Science
Release Date: March 2014

This is an internet site, produced by Point Blue, that offers resources for restoration practitioners interested in designing projects in a way that prepares them for climate change. It includes a restoration checklist, riparian restoration design database, and links to other related and internet-based resources.

The California Conservation Easement Database (CCED)
Lead Agency: Green Info
Release Date: March 2014

The California Conservation Easement Database (CCED) is a single source of aggregated easement data for the entire state of California. CCED contains lands under conservation or similar type of easement across the state, a total 1.7 million acres (200,000 of these are duplicate, overlapping easements, however, bringing actual "on the ground" acres to 1.5 million). These easements are held by 93 agencies and total of over 3,200 individual easement parcels. This first edition of CCED does not yet contain all easements - an estimated 200,000 easement acres, including significant holdings of the Calif. Dept. Fish & Wildlife and the California Rangeland Trust, were not yet available. CCED is a complimentary data set to the California Protected Areas Database (CPAD) - which highlights lands in fee ownership status. Learn more about both CPAD and CCED at www.calands.org.

The Avian Knowledge Network (AKN)
Lead Agency: Ca Avian Data Center and Pt Blue Conservation Science
Release Date: December 2013

The AKN is the primary source of bird monitoring data in the Western Hemisphere. One component of the AKN, eBird, is the most successful avian citizen science project in the planet and includes hundreds of millions of records. Other components (called AKN regional and thematic nodes), such as the California Avian Data Center, the Rocky Mountain Avian Data Center, and the Midwest (U.S.) Avian Data Center, host over 20 million records from several hundred research projects, including point count, banding, nest success, area search, and distance sampling data. The AKN originally focused on gathering and describing critical datasets for archival and research needs. More recently, the AKN has included an emphasis on the role of nodes as collaborative science-based systems where data, spatially-explicit research products, and web-based technologies are integrated into tools that provide information to natural resource management decision-makers. The site strives to implement existing and new science-based data standards, provide recommendations for best monitoring practices, and encourage innovation and use of data management, visualization, analysis, and decision support tools.

Monitoring environmental and social change using iPhones, photo-stitching, and time lapse
Lead Agency: USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center
Release Date: September 2013

With any camera phone, anyone interested can help monitor environmental changes over time with the use of a piece of angled steel, mounted to provide a consistent height, angle and direction from which to shoot images. When collected together, photo-stitching software aligns and pieces together images to show changes over time. It ends with many smart minds coming together to create apps and sites that help communities collect images and stitch together a picture of change.

EcoAtlas
Lead Agency: San Francisco Estuary Institute
Release Date: June 2013

California EcoAtlas provides access to information for effective wetland management. The maps and tools can be used to create a complete picture of aquatic resources in the landscape by integrating stream and wetland maps, restoration information, and monitoring results with land use, transportation, and other information important to the state�s wetlands.

California Climate Commons
Lead Agency: California Landscape Conservation Cooperative
Release Date: March 2013

The Climate Commons offers a starting point for discovery of climate change data and related resources, information about the science that produced it, and the opportunity to communicate with others about applying climate change science to conservation in California.

Restoring Neighborhood Streams
Lead Agency: Ann Riley
Release Date: November -0001

This book presents the author�s thirty years of practical experience managing long-term stream and river restoration projects in heavily degraded urban environments. Riley provides a level of detail only a hands-on design practitioner would know, including insights on project design, institutional and social context of successful projects, and how to avoid costly and time-consuming mistakes.

2016 Landbird Conservation Plan
Lead Agency: Partners in Flight
Release Date: November -0001

The Plan presents new science using year-round eBird data to assign stewardship responsibility and identifyies regions of greatest importance to landbirds during winter and migration. The Plan also recommends specific actions to guide landbird conservation over the next 10 years to reverse long-term population declines, prevent future species listings, and keep common birds from becoming highly threatened or at risk