GreenPlan-IT Toolkit Demonstration Report

Wu, J.; Kauhanen, P.; Mckee, L. 2015. GreenPlan-IT Toolkit Demonstration Report. SFEI Contribution No. 958. San Francisco Estuary Institute: Richmond, CA.

GreenPlan-IT is a planning level tool that was developed by SFEP and SFEI with support and oversight from BASMAA to provide Bay Area municipalities with the ability to evaluate multiple management alternatives using green infrastructure for addressing stormwater issues in urban watersheds. GreenPlan-IT combines sound science and engineering principles with GIS analysis and optimization techniques to support the cost-effective selection and placement of Green Infrastructure (GI) at a watershed scale.  Tool outputs can be used to develop quantitatively-derived watershed master plans to guide future GI implementation for improving water quality in the San Francisco Bay and its tributary watersheds.

This report provides an overview of the GreenPlan-IT Tool and demonstrates its utility and power through two pilot studies which is summarized in this report as a case study. The pilot studies with the City of San Mateo and the City of San Jose explored the use of GreenPlan-IT for identifying feasible and optimal GI locations for mitigation of stormwater runoff. They are provided here to give the reader an overview of the user application process from start to finish, including problem formulation, data collection, GIS analysis, establishing a baseline condition, GI representation, and the optimization process. Through the pilot study application process the general steps and recommendations for how GreenPlan-IT can be applied and interpreted are presented.

Wired Magazine: A new report shows an astounding amount of microplastics, largely from car tires, are tainting the watershed

Matt Simon from Wired Magazine writes:

San Francisco Bay, like Monterey Bay to its south, is a rare success story in ocean conservation. In the 1960s, three grassroots activists—Sylvia McLaughlin, Kay Kerr, and Esther Gulick—launched Save the Bay, which beat back developers trying to fill in parts of the iconic body of water.

The Guardian publishes on article on SFEI's microplastics study, further extending the report's reach

Maanvi Singh from the US edition of the Guardian, based in the UK, writes, “It was basically everywhere we looked,” said Rebecca Sutton, an environmental scientist at the San Francisco Estuary Institute, a local institution that led the three-year, $1.1m research effort.

Groundbreaking SFEI and 5 Gyres microplastics study featured in multiple media outlets

Concurrent with a sold-out symposium on Oct 2nd, several media outlets, including the Mercury News, San Francisco Chronicle, and Los Angeles Times, have released the articles relating the alarming findings regarding the pervasive presence of microplastics in our surface waters. The issue of microplastics is global in nature. However, the advances in understanding the magnitude of the problem are happening regionally through partnerships with 5 Gyres, the University of Toronto Trash Team, and other notable leaders.

SF Chronicle: Huge amounts of plastic, much of it from car tires, washing into SF Bay, SFEI study finds

More than 7 trillion tiny pieces of plastic wash from city streets into San Francisco Bay each year, a new study finds, a staggering amount of pollution that researchers weren’t entirely aware of and aren’t prepared to stop.

In LA Times: The SF Bay Microplastics report called "the most comprehensive study to date on microplastics in California."

Rosanna Xia with the LA Times relates some important findings from the new microplastics study, released today by SFEI and 5 Gyres:

"Driving is not just an air pollution and climate change problem — turns out, it just might be the largest contributor of microplastics in California coastal waters.

San Jose Mercury News highlights the findings of an SFEI microplastics report

Paul Rogers released an article in the San Jose Mercury News regarding this microplastics study, sharing its findings with the public.

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