EcoAtlas

CRAM: California Rapid Assessment Method

CRAM is a cost-effective and scientifically defensible rapid-assessment method for monitoring and assessing the ecological health of a wetland, meaning its ability to provide high levels of the ecosystem services expected for its type in California. It takes less than half a day to assess a wetland area, based on its landscape setting, hydrology, physical structure and biological structure. Because the methodology is standardized for seven major types of wetlands and their subtypes, it’s broadly applicable throughout California and can be used to compare wetlands to each other and over time at local, regional and statewidee scales.

Information on the CRAM Website

The CRAM website features statewide support for data management, training, documentation, and reporting tools to monitor and assess all common types of California wetlands using standardized rapid assessment protocols developed by the Rapid Assessment Methods Committee of the California Wetland Monitoring Workgroup (CWMW). The Committee is co-chaired by a staff member from the State Water Board and includes wetland scientists and technical staff from state and federal agencies with regulatory or management responsibility for the health of aquatic resources, as well as experts from academia and other scientific organizations across the state.

Using the Assessment Forms

CRAM can be used to assess the performance of compensatory mitigation projects and restoration projects. The easy-to-use, online data entry forms ensure that all of the appropriate site information and field data associated with CRAM assessments are standardized across the state and made accessible by environmental managers, planners, and stakeholders to inform wetland planning and management decisions. The ability to draw the CRAM assessment area online using an aerial image of the site makes it easy for CRAM practitioners to enter their site information for public distribution through EcoAtlas, and to protect information deemed unsuited for public distribution.  Public CRAM data are available as a web service, which affords a broad degree of availability and transparency to support contemporary open-data initiatives.

Learn more about CRAM on its website.

Want to know where to find habitat projects?

Habitat restoration includes voluntary restoration, restoration/re-establishment, and restoration/rehabilitation. More and more groups rely on Project Tracker to assist with their reporting because Project Tracker standardizes project data across programs for analytical and reporting purposes. It is the most comprehensive dataset for project information in most regions of California.

Project Tracker as the Best Source of Project Information for the SF Estuary

• Project Tracker provides the data for the restored tidal wetlands updates in the State of the Estuary 2019 Update and The Pulse of the Bay.
• It tracks Restoration Authority funded and eligible projects and generates the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project maps.
• The San Francisco Bay Joint Venture tracks their habitat projects in Project Tracker so they can advance projects and generate summaries on progress towards meeting regional goals. Additionally, Project Tracker can assist with developing survey designs that target data collection near restoration sites.

Keep it up!

You can help make regional rep orting more accurate and complete by entering your projects into Project Tracker and keeping the information up-to-date. Projects are also visualized and integrated with other datasets in EcoAtlas. For more information, visit ecoatlas.org.

Tools Tuned to Your Purpose

EcoAtlas dashboards offer summarized views of qualified information provided by Project Tracker and the California Aquatic Resource Inventory (CARI). These dynamic visualizations help measure the cumulative benefits of public policies and programs for California's aquatic resources.

Synthesized project information contributed by restoration practitioners and permittees can be dynamically queried in understandable regional summaries. Agency and program executives can quickly access relevant information to address management questions. As interactive summaries, the dashboards are useful in the context of local, regional, and statewide agency programs, where interested users can explore the summarized information at various spatial scales.

The dashboards also reveal differences in the availability of information from place to place. By helping to identify missing information, the EcoAtlas dashboards will help address these gaps in the future.

If you are interested in accessing data on a project-by-project basis, then the EcoAtlas download tools provide ready access to the hosted project data. You are able to filter by numerous geospatial, categorical, and other means.

A Toolset to Operationalize Established Science

EcoAtlas is the toolset of the Wetland and Riparian Area Monitoring Plan (WRAMP) developed by the California Wetland Monitoring Workgroup (CWMW). The toolset’s functions, data, and resulting outputs -- maps, charts, and analyses -- reflect the methods and peer-reviewed studies that emerge from WRAMP. The WRAMP Framework page contains a trove of studies, reports, and presentations that demonstrate the support for the WRAMP framework and EcoAtlas. A central aspect of the WRAMP framework is a classification of environmental data, their methods of collection, and their stated purposes into the following three levels:

• Maps and spatial information. These data consist of map-based inventories of aquatic areas and related resources, including rivers, streams, lakes, bays, wetlands, and their riparian areas, plus events and activities that have a direct effect on the distribution, abundance, diversity, or condition of aquatic resources. Maps may serve to plan and conduct landscape and watershed profiles of aquatic resource condition.
• General wetland condition information. This extensive dataset comprises rapid, field-based semi-quantitative measures of the overall condition or health of aquatic resources. In California, the California Rapid Assessment Method (CRAM) is the most widely used method for assessing the overall health of wetlands and streams. Other assessment tools exist and may also be used when needed.
• Specific condition information. These datasets are quantitative, field measurements of specific aspects of condition. Plant species composition, nesting bird surveys, spawning success, and groundwater recharge rates are examples of these data types.

Learn about the activities of the California Wetland Monitoring Workgroup, including details about the Wetland and Riparian Monitoring Program (WRAMP).

EcoAtlas Support

The toolset enjoys funding, data, and in-kind services from a variety of organizations, including but not limited to:

• state agencies, such as the Regional and State Water Boards, CalTrans, and California Department of Fish and Wildlife;

• federal agencies, such as the US Army Corp of Engineers and NOAA-NMFS, which stores its Southern California eelgrass restoration projects in EcoAtlas;

• local agencies, such as Flood Control Districts, Water Agdencies, and Resource Conservation Districts that have  sponsored tool development.

• special districts, such as flood control, resource conservation, and mosquito abatement districts;

• non-governmental agencies, such as SCCWRP, Central Coast Wetlands Group, SFEI, and Joint Ventures.

Who Uses EcoAtlas?

In addition, EcoAtlas, CRAM, CARI and Project Tracker were included in Proposition 1 guidelines for managing information on restoration projects. The CWMW and its associated technical  committees will continue to guide development of EcoAtlas and other WRAMP toolsets. EcoAtlas development will continue to be funded by grants and contracts to the EcoAtlas development and user communities. US Environmental Protection Agency, San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority, California State Water Resources Control Board, the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the California Ocean Protection Council, State Coastal Conservancy, and California Department of Fish and Wildlife have provided substantial funding, in-kind services, or datasets for tool enhancements over recent years.

More About our Partners

Learn more about the many partners who support the toolset.