Tidal Marshes and Native Fishes in the Delta: Will Restoration Make a Difference? Seminar & Workshop

Robin Grossinger will be giving a talk at 8:45 am:
Tidal Wetlands in the Delta Past and Present: Extent, Character, and Transformation

The Seminar & Workshop is being convened by: Professor Peter Moyle, Department of Wildlife, Fish & Conservation Biology, U.C. Davis and Matt Nobriga,Cal-Neva Chapter of the American Fisheries Society

ABSTRACT
The release of the draft Bay-Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) adds urgency to the need to more fully
understand how habitat in the Delta can be “restored” to benefit native fishes. Basically, the purpose of BDCP is to improve delivery of water to parts of the Bay Area, Central Valley and Southern California from the Sacramento River, while also improving conditions for endangered native fishes. A major assumption of current biological opinions and the BDCP is that restoration/construction of thousands of acres of tidal marsh habitat will have major benefits to fish, making up in part for the negative effects of altered flows and water diversions
on these fish.

To address these issues, this seminar intends to explore the ecological linkages between tidal marshes and fish in the Delta (upper San Francisco Estuary). The speakers will focus on the following questions:

1. How are tidal marshes linked to estuarine productivity, especially of fish?
2. What are the historic and current linkages between tidal marshes and fish production in the Delta?
3. Do pelagic/open water fishes derive population-level benefits from tidal marshes? If so, is there a scale dependence- e.g., a ratio between marsh surface area and open water surface area/volume?
4. What are key remaining information gaps in systems both inside and outside California?