Historically, San Francisco Bay supported the largest salt pond complex on the Pacific coast of North America, and these areas have been used by large numbers of migrating and wintering waterbirds for more than a century.
The aim of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project is to restore 50–90 percent of former salt evaporation ponds to tidal marsh in San Francisco Bay. However, hundreds of thousands of waterbirds use these ponds over winter and during fall and spring migration.
The South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project aims to restore 50–90 percent of former salt evaporation ponds into tidal marsh in South San Francisco Bay, California. However, large numbers of waterbirds use these ponds annually as nesting and foraging habitat.
Our goal was to evaluate communities of benthic invertebrates and shorebirds on the Alviso mudflat prior to breaching Pond A6 to serve as the baseline for future assessments of potential impacts.
This project will examine the bird population and benthic invertebrate densities on the Alviso Shoals immediately adjacent to A6 which separates Alviso and Guadalupe Sloughs.