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The beneficial reuse of dredged sediment is one strategy in a broader portfolio that is being developed for San Francisco Bay to help marshes adapt to rising sea level. Dredged sediment is currently being used in restoration projects around the Bay, but additional sediment is needed to meet the demand. The guidelines for determining if sediment is appropriate for beneficial reuse were developed twenty years ago. As part of assessing the role of dredged sediment in Bay restoration and adaptation strategies, the Regional Monitoring Program for Water Quality (RMP) and stakeholders recognized the need to revisit the beneficial reuse guidelines for dredged sediment. In September 2019, the RMP convened a workshop that included four technical experts to review the beneficial reuse guidelines. The experts were asked to answer three questions: 1) Are the current screening guidelines appropriate for beneficial reuse? 2) Is the current screening process appropriate and adequate? If not, what are your recommendations for improving it? and 3) How should bioaccumulation potential be addressed for the beneficial reuse of sediment? Based on the discussion of these three questions, six recommendations emerged from the workshop.

Trash has received renewed focus in recent years as policy makers, public agencies, environmental organizations, and community groups have taken many steps towards trash quantification and management across California. The range of management actions is matched by the diversity of monitoring approaches, designed to determine key attributes associated with trash pollution on California’s lands and in its waterways.

This report describes the field testing associated with a project designed to validate the accuracy, precision, and practicality of several trash monitoring methods, practiced across the state. Additionally, the project measured the efficacy of a novel monitoring method designed to detect trash via remote sensing and machine learning. Readers will find details about each respective method -- the specific approach to
landscape characterization, the qualitative or quantitative measures undertaken, the team-based quality assurance for data collection -- as well as the approach that the testing team adopted to ensure efficient, accurate, and useful validation of the methods.

Because the validation efforts integrated multiple methods, using multiple teams at a selection of common sites, the field testing report yields useful statistical information not only about each method individually, but about the comparability of the results. The report illustrates the
correlation factor associated with different forms of trash metrics, associated with different methods practiced on the same assessment sites. The results illustrated a generally high degree of correlation among different methods, which promises opportunities to compare results meaningfully across methods.

Furthermore, this field testing report provides quantitative measures to illustrate the repeatability of each method, the differences and insights yielded by assessment site sizing criteria varying among methods, the transferability / teach-ability of each method among trash monitoring practitioners, and how the degrees of accuracy might aid programs in performing mass balance analysis of known sources
to trash detected in a given site.

Regarding innovation, the project team leveraged multiple on-the-ground methods and special testing scenarios to compare conventional and novel (aerial) assessments to measure the relative accuracy and precision of this emergent technology that might address some of the resource constraints that currently limit the broader or more frequent deployment of conventional trash assessment methods. The analyses captured in this field testing report offer specific quantitative measures of the accuracy (bias), precision (repeatability), practicality and cost associated with each method. This information is subsequently used to inform a companion summary analysis found in the Trash Monitoring Playbook, which is designed to evaluate the applicability of the monitoring methods to address classes of
monitoring questions.

The emergence of comparable landscape approaches to wildlife conservation and water quality improvement through federal and California state regulatory and management programs provides an opportunity for their coordination to better protect California’s aquatic resources, especially streams, wetlands, and riparian areas. Such coordination is patently desirable.  A framework has been developed to help coordinate restoration and compensatory mitigation across policies governing wildlife conservation and water quality in the landscape context. The framework is based on the Wetland and Riparian Area Monitoring Plan (WRAMP) of the California Wetland Monitoring Workgroup (CWMW) of the Water Quality Monitoring Council. The framework presented in this memorandum is a version of the standard WRAMP framework. It only differs from the standard framework to better accommodate wildlife conservation planning, assessment and reporting. To distinguish this version from the standard version, it is termed the 'WRAMP for wildlife'.

Sediment samples were collected on and adjacent to the Whale’s Tail South marsh. Short push-cores of bed sediment were collected in South San Francisco Bay adjacent to Whales Tail South marsh on five days from June through August 2021 and 3 days from November 2021 to January 2022. Additional samples were taken from ceramic tiles placed on the marsh to measure sediment deposition and from rip-up clasts deposited on the marsh edge. Samples were analyzed for sediment properties including bulk density, particle size distribution, and percent carbon. These data were collected as part of a collaborative study with the USGS Western Ecological Research Center to quantify sediment fluxes, deposition on the marsh, and changes in marsh morphology at Whale's Tail marsh in southern San Francisco Bay.

GreenPlan-IT is a planning level tool that was developed by SFEP and SFEI with support and oversight from BASMAA to provide Bay Area municipalities with the ability to evaluate multiple management alternatives using green infrastructure for addressing stormwater issues in urban watersheds. GreenPlan-IT combines sound science and engineering principles with GIS analysis and optimization techniques to support the cost-effective selection and placement of Green Infrastructure (GI) at a watershed scale.  Tool outputs can be used to develop quantitatively-derived watershed master plans to guide future GI implementation for improving water quality in the San Francisco Bay and its tributary watersheds.

This report provides an overview of the GreenPlan-IT Tool and demonstrates its utility and power through two pilot studies which is summarized in this report as a case study. The pilot studies with the City of San Mateo and the City of San Jose explored the use of GreenPlan-IT for identifying feasible and optimal GI locations for mitigation of stormwater runoff. They are provided here to give the reader an overview of the user application process from start to finish, including problem formulation, data collection, GIS analysis, establishing a baseline condition, GI representation, and the optimization process. Through the pilot study application process the general steps and recommendations for how GreenPlan-IT can be applied and interpreted are presented.

Structurally, the GreenPlan-IT is comprised of three components: (a) a GIS-based Site Locator Tool to identify potential GI sites; (b) a Modeling Tool that quantifies anticipated watershed-scale runoff and pollutant load reduction from GI sites; and (c) an Optimization Tool that uses a cost-benefit analysis to identify the best combinations of GI types and number of sites within a watershed for achieving flow and/or load reduction goals. The three tool components were designed as standalone modules to provide flexibility and their interaction is either through data exchange, or serving as a subroutine to another tool. This user manual addresses each of the tools separately, though they are designed to complement each other.

This effort is intended to provide planning-level regional guidance for placement of green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) in Livermore-Amador Valley. This work identifies potential GSI locations and quantifies contaminant load and stormwater runoff volume reduction benefits through the application of GreenPlan-IT, a planning tool developed by the San Francisco Estuary Institute and regional partners. Ultimately, the urban greening analysis presented in this report is intended to help enhance stream and watershed resilience, reduce peak flows, and improve water quality.

This study synthesizes a diverse array of data to examine the ecological patterns, ecosystem functions, and hydrology that characterized a central portion of the Laguna de Santa Rosa during the mid-19th century, and to analyze landscape changes over the past 150 years. The primary purpose of this study was to help guide restoration actions and other measures aimed at reducing nutrient loads within this portion of the Laguna de Santa Rosa watershed.

The U.S. Geological Survey Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center collected hydrodynamic and sediment-transport data at shallow water sites in South San Francisco Bay and in the Whale's Tail South marsh in Eden Landing Ecological Reserve in Alameda County, CA in 2021 and 2022. This data release includes hydrodynamic and sediment transport time-series data spanning from June 2021 to January 2022, as well as sediment bed properties and water column suspended-sediment concentrations Details on station location, instrumentation, and measured variables are included in sections for each data type. The data were collected to determine sediment supply and sediment delivery to marshes, both in the bay and in tidal creeks as well as across the bay-marsh interface during varying tidal and wave conditions. The goal of the project was to more accurately predict the fate of marshes and to optimize management actions. They were collected as part of a collaborative study with the USGS Western Ecological Research Center. These data are intended for science researchers, students, policy makers, and the general public.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center collected hydrodynamic and suspended sediment flocculation data at channel and shallow water sites in south San Francisco Bay in July 2020. The data were used to determine water column stratification, turbulence profiles, and floc size evolution. The goal of this project was to bound the controls on floc size and floc settling velocity to improve estimates of sediment fluxes and consider error in numerical models of sediment transport in San Francisco Bay. This data release includes hydrodynamic, sediment concentration, and particle size timeseries during July 2020, as well as sediment bed properties, water column particle size distributions, and CTD profiles collected on four days in July 2020 at both sites. Details on station location, instrumentation, and measured variables are included on pages for each data type. These data were collected as part of a collaborative project with the USGS California Water Science Center. Funding was provided by the San Francisco Estuary Institute.

This memo was developed by SFEI to introduce the EcoAtlas tools, their intended (target) user community, and the short- and long-term intended applications.