May 24, 2019

SFEI's Julie Beagle penned a new article for Bay Nature, describing the importance of the new Adaptation Atlas, a guide for those around the Bay Area looking for the best ways to adapt their local area to sea-level rise:

With funding from the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, the San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI), partnered with SPUR, a regional urbanist think tank, to bridge the divide between aquatic scientists, sea level rise planners, and land use planners. We gathered a team of experts, formed a technical advisory group, and convened high level representatives from most of the regional agencies who regulate the waters of the state and the Bay shoreline. These groups helped us get the science right, and also to influence how this information would be used.

In May 2019, we released our work in a report we call the “Adaptation Atlas.” And we call the framework “Operational Landscape Units for San Francisco Bay.”

Operational Landscape Units (OLUs) are connected geographic areas that we believe to be best managed as a unit. OLUs consist of physical landscape features such as rivers, floodplains, and wetlands, as well as elements of the built environment such as parking lots, landfills, and residential neighborhoods. Throughout the San Francisco Bay, we identified 30 such unique OLUs.

By: 
Julie Beagle
Programs and Focus Areas: 
Resilient Landscapes Program
Shoreline Resilience
Watershed Science & Management