The Baylands Resilience Framework provides quantitative data to help planners and managers identify where adaptation and restoration projects can increase baylands resilience to sea level rise.
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SFEI’s Adaptation Atlas identified places along the San Francisco Bay shoreline suitable for nature-based solutions, such as tidal marshes, mudflats, eelgrass, beaches, and oyster reefs.
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The Baylands Resilience Framework builds upon the Adaptation Atlas, going beyond opportunity mapping to calculate resilience metrics that help identify where nature-based solutions are needed and why.
Defining “Resilience”
When baylands planners and managers talk about sea level rise resilience, they are often interested in ensuring that shoreline habitats continue to provide critical ecosystem services, such as flood attenuation, carbon sequestration, water quality improvement, wildlife support, and recreational access. For the Baylands Resilience Framework, SFEI identifies the elements that support the resilience of tidal marsh ecosystem services. For example, elements of resilience for wildlife support include patch size, topographic complexity, and connectivity to nearby marshes. Next, we develop metrics to measure each of those elements and then map the metrics for hundreds of marshes and diked baylands around San Francisco Bay. Understanding how these metrics vary across the region gives insight into the resilience of the Bay Area’s marshes and other baylands habitats today. We can also track how baylands resilience changes over time as our region implements adaptation projects.
Supporting Decision-Making Processes
SFEI’s partners use the Baylands Resilience Framework metrics to inform adaptation and resilience projects. For example, the US Army Corps of Engineers uses these metrics to help decide the best locations to place dredged sediment removed from navigation channels. The metrics identify places where dredged sediment can help bolster the resilience of marshes that are low in elevation or where it can support wetland restoration projects that connect bayland to upland habitat. Read more about how the Baylands Resilience Framework supports USACE’s regional dredged material management plan here.
The resilience metrics are available to users in two forms. One is an interactive web map, where users can directly explore the metrics. The other is the Resilience Metrics Mapbook, which synthesizes and summarizes the metrics for each of San Francisco Bay’s 30 Operational Landscape Units (Bay shore planning units identified in the Adaptation Atlas). The mapbook gives examples of how the metrics can be interpreted to identify opportunities for nature-based solutions, and links back to the web map.
Reports
- Baylands Resilience Metrics Mapbook
- Baylands Resilience Metrics: Wildlife Support, Flood Attenuation, and Sediment Placement Feasibility
- Baylands Resilience Framework for Wildlife Support
Metrics
Our region faces an immense challenge in adapting to sea level rise. Without action, the San Francisco Bay Area (Bay Area) risks losing shoreline habitats and the critical services they provide, from flood protection to wildlife support to carbon sequestration.
The Atlas for Regional Shoreline Adaptation Planning
The Regional Shoreline Adaptation Plan Atlas is a comprehensive resource for understanding and addressing the impacts of sea level rise along shorelines. Learn more about the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission's new tool to serve the best available science and information to a receptive community of municipal planners.
San Francisco Baylands Resilience Metrics Mapbook
SFEI’s Baylands and Shoreline Resilience team helps planners, regulatory agencies, community-based organizations, and other stakeholders make informed decisions about where and how to implement nature-based solutions for sea level rise adaptation. The 2019 Adaptation Atlas identified places that are suitable for various types of nature-based solutions, including tidal marshes, mudflats, eelgrass, beaches, and oyster reefs.
