On Sunday, October 30 from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m., SFEI’s Robin Grossinger appeared on a weekly, hour-long discussion series called The Forum. He joined Malcom Clarence Young, the dean of Grace Cathedral, to discuss our changing climate and our place as Bay Area denizens in a world that is rapidly changing.
A recent story in the LA Times by Ron Lin underscores the newly identified threat that earthquakes pose to the San Francisco Bay waterfront. Under certain circumstances, the sea wall that currently protects the Embarcadero and its surrounding infrastructure could be dramatically compromised during a strong enough seismic event. The results could be capastrophic to a key driver of San Francisco's economy. And the fix to the vulnerability would be expensive at $3 billion.
Join the conversation as host Ethan Elkind and guests discuss new reports indicating that sea levels may be rising at a faster pace than predicted. Are popular destinations like the Ferry Building and essential infrastructure like the airport in danger of flooding? What parts of the Bay Area are at the greatest risk, and what is being done to protect against the dangers posed by accelerated sea level rise?
Matt Gerhart of the California Coastal Conservancy and Letitia Grenier of SFEI will be speaking at the SPUR Urban Center about the Baylands Goals and the implications for restoration in the face of climate change. How do we use natural features and natural processes to offer greater protection against rapid climatic changes and sea-level rise? This new report sheds some light on this critical subject:
This report explores the potential for integrating ecological functions into flood risk management on lower Novato Creek. It presents an initial vision of how ecological elements could contribute to flood protection, based on a broad scale analysis and a one day workshop of local and regional experts. The Vision is not intended to be implemented as is, but rather adapted and applied through future projects and analysis. Other actions (e.g., floodwater detention basins) may also need to be implemented in the interim to meet flood risk objectives.
On November 17th, the Exploratorium will co-host with the San Francisco Estuary Institute an event to address what can be done to adapt to climate change in the San Francisco Bay Area. The recently released report, Baylands Goals and Climate Change: What Can We Do?, offers innovative and sustainable ways to work with, rather than against, the imminent challenges such as sea level rise and extreme weather events.
From 6pm to 8:30pm at the Exploratorium (Pier 15, Embarcadero and Green St, San Francisco), the following panelists will discuss the report's findings:
An update to the 1999 Bayland Ecosystem Habitat Goals, the new report called The Baylands and Climate Change: What We Can Do urges swift action to restore our wetlands as a buffer against rising seas and associated flooding. Sea-level rise will increase in a few decades. If we do not act swiftly to restore our Bay Area wetlands, our cities will be in greater peril for increased flooding and infrastructure impairment. Our highways, airports, utility services, pipelines, water treatment plants are all threatened by rising tides.
The report synthesizes the recommendations of 200 scientists and government experts on climate change, sea level rise, watershed systems and urban engineering.
On KQED Forum, Michael Krasny interviewed SFEI's Letitia Grenier and the State Coastal Conservancy's Sam Schuchat about the release of the new Science Update Report and its findings regarding the urgency to restore wetlands in advance of accelerating sea-level rise. As offered on KQED's website, "the new report reveals that 42,000 acres of wetlands in the Bay Area must be restored over the next 15 years to mitigate the effects of climate change. Rising sea levels, swelling tides and strong storms threaten billions of dollars worth of businesses, homes and infrastructure."
The McCormack-Williamson Tract (MWT) was purchased in 1999 by The Nature Conservancy with CALFED Ecosystem Restoration Program (ERP) funds. Though today it looks like many islands of the central Delta, it is situated in a unique position at the intersection between the historical north and central Delta, at the downstream end of the Mokelumne River delta. While it represents only a small portion (<0.2%) of the historical Delta, it lies in an area of hydrologic and ecological importance along the third largest river of the Delta, the Mokelumne River.
The Delta Landscapes Project, which began in 2012 and will run through 2016, has developed a body of work to inform landscape-scale restoration of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta ecosystem.
