USGS Western Ecological Research Center manages a decadal network of surface elevation table-marker horizon (SET-MH) plots throughout California, including San Francisco Bay.
The resilience of salt marshes with low organic production depends on their effective capture and retention of mineral sediment from adjacent waters.
Restoration Project Introduction
Wave-driven erosion of marsh boundaries is a major cause of marsh loss, but little research has captured the effect of seasonal differences on marsh-edge retreat rates to illuminate temporal patterns of when the majority of this erosion is occurring.
Executive Summary
This report provides a project update for year two of a three-year collaboration between the San
Francisco Bay Nutrient Management Strategy (NMS), San Francisco Bay Regional Monitoring Program,
Bathymetric change analyses document historical patterns of sediment deposition and erosion, providing valuable insight into the sediment dynamics of coastal systems, including pathways of sediment and sediment-bound contaminants.
The South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project (SBSPRP) encompasses over 6,000 hectares of former salt production ponds along the south edge of the San Francisco Bay and represents t
To better understand suspended-sediment transport in a tidal slough adjacent to a large wetland restoration project, we deployed continuously-measuring temperature, salinity, depth, turbidity, and velocity sensors since 2010, and added a dissolved-oxygen sensor in 2012, at a near-bottom location
Recent studies of sea level rise in San Francisco Bay have indicated that the majority of tidal marshes surrounding the Bay are likely to lose marsh plant communities by 2100 because natural sediment accretion rates will not keep pace with sea level rise.
In 2010 the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Coastal and Marine Geology Program completed three cruises to map the bathymetry of the main channel and shallow intertidal mudflats in the southernmost part of south San Francisco Bay.
As a result of regional groundwater overdrafts prior to the 1970s, parts of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project project area have subsided below sea-level and will require between 29 and 45 million m3 of sediment to raise the surface of the subsided areas to elevations appropriate for tid