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Project Description: This project involves a two-year field study and analytical effort to examine the role of wetland restoration on affecting ecosystem processes at different scales and to develop effective monitoring methodologies for other restoration projects. The project is a collaboration amongst a team of eight organizations – Wetlands and Water Resources, PRBO Conservation Science, San Francisco Estuary Institute, University of California at Berkeley, San Francisco State University, University of Washington, U.S. Geological Survey, and Philip Williams and Associates. Being carried out on behalf of the California Bay-Delta Authority Science Program, the project is aimed at improving our understanding of restoration and monitoring methodologies to improve the effectiveness of ecosystem restoration efforts throughout the San Francisco Estuary and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The project includes monitoring physical processes, vegetation, birds, fish, invertebrates, and primary production at six sites from the western Delta to San Pablo Bay, and landscape ecology at these six sites and extended throughout the region. WWR is the Lead Principal Investigator, lead for Physical Processes, and co-lead for Landscape Ecology.
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Project Duration 2002 - Present Project Status Publications Ongoing Client CALFED Science Program Downloads Links |
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Project Description: This project involved a broad range of physical and biological monitoring of a 45-acre tidal marsh restoration project on a subsided diked bayland on the Petaluma River over a five-year period. Hydrogeomorphic and biological processes controlling evolution to a tidal marsh via natural sedimentation, documenting site changes. Funding came from the Sonoma Land Trust, US Fish and Wildlife Service, CA Sea Grant Program, SF Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, and USGS. Data collection included high-frequency time series measurements of water level, temperature, suspended sediment concentrations, and velocity; topographic surveys; vegetation surveys; and avian surveys. Remotely sensed data collection included low-altitude stereographic aerial imagery at 6-month to 1-year intervals used to generate high-resolution DEMs and channel planform maps. We analyzed tidal inundation, sediment flux, and effects of the February 1998 El Niño storms. These data allowed several determinations of hydrogeomorphic and biological processes influencing tidal marsh restoration evolution. We identified important effects of pilot channels and small internal berms, determined that most sediment supply occurs during monthly higher spring tides, determined that desiccation strongly influences site elevations at certain evolutionary stages, and identified appropriate data collection frequency intervals for determining project evolution.
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Project Duration 1996-2008 Client Multiple Downloads
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Project Description: WWR led a collaborative research team to develop and test Best Management Practices for operating diked, seasonally managed wetlands in Suisun Marsh to reduce their generation and discharge of low dissolved oxygen (DO) waters and elevated methyl mercury (MeHg) concentrations. Low DO events have been documented periodically in the smaller perimeter tidal sloughs in Suisun Marsh mainly in fall months when the diked marshes begin their fall flood-up cycles. Conditions leading to low DO events also support the biogeochemical processes that transform mercury ubiquitous in soils into the toxic methyl mercury form. This two-year field study utilized two diked marshes for management modifications and intensive field sampling that included continuous measurements of water depth, temperature, conductivity, DO, pH and chlorophyll, grab soil and water samples for MeHg and organic carbon, meteorological data, wetland topography and vegetation, and a laboratory experiment for MeHg-vegetation relationships. Collaborators included Bachand and Associates, Suisun Resource Conservation District, U.S. Geological Survey, California Department of Water Resources, U.C. Davis, and the Moss Landing Marine Laboratory. |
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Project Duration 2006 - 2011 Client State Water Resources Control Board Downloads Final Evaluation Memorandum Links Suisun Resource Conservation District California Department of Fish and Game California Department of Water Resources |
