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Habitat Assessment & Monitoring Technology

Forward-leaning opportunities for new technologies

The Environmental Informatics program adapts and adopts new technologies for habitat assessment and monitoring. Whether the team is flying UAS (drones) over creeks, rivers, and marshes to identify trash or using a mobile app to count and categorize tobacco product waste, our technologists are always looking for better ways to gather data to inform decision making.

People below a drone
Photo: Pete Kauhanen

Our UAS Pilots are at your service!

SFEI has developed novel, cost-effective solutions to costly problems. In particular, our work with drones or Unoccupied Aerial Systems (UAS) has yielded very promising results. We have used UAS to address a number of scientific challenges and use cases. SFEI applications of UAS include, wetland monitoring, restoration monitoring, sediment volume estimations, and trash surveys leveraging machine learning algorithms. In the course of our use of UAS, we have derived some useful analyses on the technology that lend the resulting products credibility and reliability.

EcoAtlas, a mapping tool to plan, assess, and track wetland restoration

EcoAtlas is a set of tools for generating, assembling, storing, visualizing, sharing, and reporting environmental data and information. The tools can be used indvidually or together, and they can be adjusted or tuned to meet the specific needs of environmental planners, regulators, managers, scientists, and educators.

The best maps to represent California’s aquatic resources can be found in EcoAtlas, where they span multiple programs across California and help restoration practitioners communicate about their projects while agency planners and regulators leverage the wealth of current and legacy data to make key decisions about the future of our wetlands. 
 

California Rapid Assessment Method (CRAM)

The California Rapid Assessment Method (CRAM) is a cost-effective scientifically defensible observational field method to assess the ecological condition of streams and wetlands in California. We are a statewide lead in developing, supporting and maintaining the method, its materials, its training program, and its online data management system.

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Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a powerful dynamic toolset that allows complex spatial analyses to be applied to the landscape. SFEI is known for its distinctive and influential map-based products that support better decision-making and promote smart solutions for environmental problems. The GIS team supports SFEI’s mission through data production, mapping expertise, spatial analysis, and application development.

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EcoAtlas

EcoAtlas is a set of tools for visualizing, sharing, summarizing, and reporting on standardized geospatial environmental datasets of stream and wetlands extent and conditions. Tools include the Landscape Profile Tool and summary Dashboards. EcoAtlas broadly supports restoration and regulatory planning and decision making.

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Assessment Methods and Technologies

Rapid Field Assessments

California Rapid Assessment Method or CRAM is a cost-effective and scientifically defensible rapid assessment method for monitoring and assessing the ecological conditions of wetlands throughout California. It takes less than half a day to assess a wetland area, and is designed to evaluate the condition of the wetland based on its landscape setting, hydrology, physical structure and biological structure.  Because the methodology is standardized for over seven types of wetlands, ecological condition scores can be compared at the local, regional and statewide landscape scales.

CRAM

 

Geographic Systems

The California Aquatic Resources Inventory or CARI is a seamless statewide map compiled from multiple data sources and standardized to a common classification system. This statewide dataset provides the best available map of inland state surface waters and serves as the base map in EcoAtlas to coordinate monitoring and assessment at the landscape scale across federal, state, and local agencies, while providing enough detail to inform local land use planning.

GIS

 

Customized EcoAtlas Landscape Profiles

EcoAtlas is a mapping and geographic data visualization tool that continues to evolve to meet emerging needs. The toolset now includes new data layers and summaries to support the watershed planning, tracking, and reporting needs for the state. Summarized watershed information can be used to develop a Watershed Profile that complies with Water Board requirements for proposed restoration projects or mitigation for dredge or fill projects. A Watershed Profile is a compilation of information on the abundance, diversity, and condition of aquatic resources in a project evaluation area and is used to evaluate the impacts of a project and help define watershed goals. More information on how to generate a Watershed Profile.

Synthesizing Data

Featured Projects

 

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