Apr 2, 2021

The Trees and Hydrology in Urban Landscapes report has recently been released as part of the EPA-funded Healthy Watersheds, Resilient Baylands project. It supports building links between stormwater management and urban ecological improvements by evaluating how complementary urban greening activities, including green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) and urban tree canopy, can be integrated and improved to reduce runoff and contaminant loads in stormwater systems. This work expands the capacity for evaluating engineered GSI and non-engineered urban greening within a modeling and analysis framework, with a primary focus on evaluating the hydrologic benefit of urban trees. Insights can inform stormwater management policy and planning.

Effective implementation of urban greening strategies is needed to address legacies of landscape change and environmental degradation, ongoing development pressures, and the urgency of the climate crisis. With limited space and resources, these challenges will not be met through single-issue or individual-sector management and planning. Increasingly, local governments, regulatory agencies, and other urban planning organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area are expanding upon the holistic, portfolio-based, and multi-benefit approaches.

Separately, another report, Integrating Planning with Nature, illustrates how nature-based solutions can be integrated from downtown San José to Coyote Valley upstream to build climate resilience; quantifies associated ecosystem services; and identifies planning and policy approaches for implementation. Scenarios were developed with the help of an interdisciplinary group of local experts through two charrettes to generate holistic solutions that will contribute to a number of ongoing planning efforts.

These projects were featured on KGO-TV on July 1, 2021.

View and download Trees and Hydrology in Urban Landscapes
View and download Integrating Planning with Nature: Building Climate Resilience Across the Urban-to-Rural Gradient
Programs and Focus Areas: 
Clean Water Program
Geographic Information Systems
Software Engineering
Resilient Landscapes Program
Urban Nature Lab