Water Resource Collections and Archives

Management of Eroding Shorelines

Organization: The Bay Institute
2006 Grant Recipient - Marin County

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to develop recommendations for managing eroding mudflats, tidal marshes and bayfront levees to protect wetlands and reduce flood hazards in the light of future sea-level rise in San Francisco Bay. Through analysis of existing long-term monitoring datasets and collection of new monitoring data at several restored and natural marsh shoreline sites we better understand the processes controlling erosion of the shoreline in the Bay. These technical data have been translated into a set of management tools and recommendations for marsh restoration and flood management along these types of shorelines. The recommendations supplement published guidance around the Bay presented in the Design Guidelines for Tidal Wetland Restoration, which were based on work partially supported by the San Francisco Foundation. 

An improved understanding of these shoreline processes will lead to a more informed decision-making process for both restoration and flood managers. The need for better information is acute given the age and condition of many of the outboard levees, the urban development that has occurred behind them in recent decades, rising sea levels and the erosion of marsh edges, and the desire to restore tidal flows to large areas of diked bayland.

2012 Update

Climate change is an evolving science and sea level rise projections have been the subject of much revision. The findings of the 2006 San Francisco Foundation study were subsequently incorporated in an updated report funded by the Marin Community Foundation in 2011.

Documents

• Monitoring the Response of Tidal Marshes to Climate Change in San Francisco Bay(draft) / Philip Williams and Associates. July 2011. (69 pps.)

Primary Contact for the Project:

Jeremy Lowe
Director, ESAPWA
Phone: (415) 262-2304
E-mail: JLowe@esassoc.com