Alison Whipple
Alison Whipple, PhD
Program Science Director
Resilient Landscapes Program
Delta Science & Management
Historical Ecology
Watershed Science & Management
(510) 746-7318
Alison Whipple is Science Director of the Resilient Landscapes Program at the San Francisco Estuary Institute. She has an interdisciplinary background in hydrologic sciences, floodplain restoration, landscape ecology, and climate change. Her work is motivated by the need to support diverse and productive ecosystems in a highly altered and changing world through science-informed land and water management. She completed her PhD in Hydrologic Sciences from the University of California at Davis in 2018, and her research addressed hydrologic and floodplain inundation regime characterization, hydrodynamic modeling, and spatial analysis to understand restoration potential. She worked with the San Francisco Estuary Institute prior to graduate school, focused on historical ecology of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. She received her MS and BS from Stanford University in Earth Systems, with her thesis on low-flow characteristics of small coastal watershed streams of Northern California.
Related Projects, News, and Events
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Join us in congratulating SFEI's Associate GIS Specialist, Kat Palermo, for successfully attaining her Part 107 Remote Pilot License from the FAA! She joins GIS Manager, Pete Kauhanen, as a second drone pilot at SFEI. This achievement, along with the acquisition of a DJI Mavic 3 Enterprise small Unoccupied Aerial Vehicle (sUAV), significantly enhances SFEI’s monitoring and science communication capabilities. The advanced drone features a high-quality sensor on a stabilizing gimbal and a Real Time Kinetic (RTK) module, enabling centimeter-level accuracy.
Climate change models forecast that California’s fluctuations between dry and wet years will grow more intense as the globe warms. So when Zone 7 Water Agency’s territory sustained severe damage in the storms of 2017 following the drought of 2012-2016, it catalyzed increased preparation for a future of greater climate extremes.
![Sacramento River Bend Outstanding Natural Area, Bureau of Land Management](https://www.sfei.org/sites/default/files/styles/portfolio_sm/public/projects/28927242322_b18b678716_o.jpg?itok=hG5FqC69&c=c31d9e289f15c403f09d0937af4be8fd)
The Sacramento Valley Historical Ecology Study will synthesize historical data in order to understand the ecological, hydrological, and geomorphic conditions of the valley prior to major Euro-American modification. Using early sources such as historical maps, aerial photography, textual accounts, and early surveys, the study will reconstruct a picture of past landscape conditions, processes, and habitat types to help inform restoration and management projects within the Sacramento Valley.
Catalyzed by the extensive damages caused by the Winter 2016-2017 storms and the opportunity to align flood response with major habitat improvement, Preparing for the Storm is an innovative public-private partnership to improve watershed health and resilience in the Alameda Creek watershed.
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Sediment Solutions is a timely and innovative project that builds on SFEI’s past work, operationalizing cutting-edge science to inform management approaches that take advantage of natural processes to provide more creek sediment to baylands, increase climate resilience, and enhance creek health. With study areas in North Bay, East Bay, and South Bay, the project will provide new guidance for management strategies that support flood risk management and ecosystem health benefits throughout the region.
![](https://www.sfei.org/sites/default/files/styles/portfolio_sm/public/news/richey%20Laguna_2019_DSCF8255.jpg?itok=7MlPvdzY&c=babf762f83964a60c2173d192cdf01ee)
The Laguna de Santa Rosa, an expansive freshwater wetland complex located in the Russian River watershed of Sonoma County, CA, is a vital ecological and cultural resource that has undergone considerable change over the past 150 years. Land conversion for agriculture and development have led to a decrease in habitat for native species within the Laguna and an increase in the delivery of streamflow, fine sediment, and nutrients to the Laguna.
![Laguna de Santa Rosa](https://www.sfei.org/sites/default/files/styles/portfolio_sm/public/projects/richey%20Laguna_2019_DSCF8255_0_0.jpg?itok=6e0Cx1od&c=463f29d8f49e48c5faaf8b19ccd96374)
The Laguna de Santa Rosa is an expansive freshwater wetland complex that hosts a rich diversity of plant and wildlife species, and is also home to a thriving agricultural community. Since the mid-19th century, modifications to the Laguna and its surrounding landscape have degraded habitat conditions for both wildlife and people.
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The largest brackish marsh on the West Coast, Suisun Marsh is a unique transitional landscape between San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The Marsh supports high ecological diversity and has long been managed for recreational hunting and native species support, yet it is threatened by an uncertain future under climate change. Effective adaptation in Suisun will require coordinated, science-based planning by agencies and private landowners.
![](https://www.sfei.org/sites/default/files/styles/portfolio_sm/public/projects/Next%20Generation%20Urban%20Greening.jpg?itok=W9nFrQYL&c=f8626af029b1c1e624186a80317e700b)
SFEI is working with partners across the Bay Area to design tools to help cities achieve biodiversity, stormwater, and climate benefits through multifunctional green infrastructure.
![Restoration Plan for the Laguna de Santa Rosa](https://www.sfei.org/sites/default/files/styles/portfolio_sm/public/news/Screenshot%202023-08-29%20094403.png?itok=gzlxlKmO&c=7a6d90ad56ba291a8e0d11823e15d338)
SFEI completed a Restoration Plan for the Laguna de Santa Rosa in the Russian River watershed. SFEI, Sonoma Water, and the Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation worked with technical advisors, stakeholders, tribal representatives, and local landowners to develop the Restoration Plan that provides a restoration planning framework and conceptual designs for multi-benefit habitat restoration projects that support people and wildlife.
![Report Cover: SAW Restoration and Enhancement Suitability Study](https://www.sfei.org/sites/default/files/styles/portfolio_sm/public/news/SAW%20Restoration%20and%20Enhancement%20Suitability%20Study%20SFEI%20and%20HT%20Harvey%20070523%20high%20res_Page_01.jpg?itok=x4jnQQec&c=6a7639a58c42762e09e61b26869b0135)
The “Sycamore Alluvial Woodland Restoration and Enhancement Suitability Study” addresses distribution and regeneration patterns and restoration strategies of sycamore alluvial woodland (SAW) habitat, a unique and relatively rare native vegetation community adapted to California’s intermittent rivers and streams. The report was produced by SFEI and H. T.
![Landscape Scenario Planning Tool](https://www.sfei.org/sites/default/files/styles/portfolio_sm/public/projects/BLM_CC_CosumnesRiverPreserve_Dec28_2014_BobWick_BLM.jpg?itok=DllH-JSx&c=d9b3ae7e5a5d2fde38f01453cdf37181)
This project is a tool for planning scenarios of landscape-scale restoration. The tool is designed to inform ongoing and future restoration planning efforts. In particular, this tool will help inform implementation of restoration objectives as described in the Delta Plan, as well as the ongoing Ecosystem Amendment to Chapter 4.
In partnership with the Delta Stewardship Council, the San Francisco Estuary Institute has developed version 2.0 of the Landscape Scenario Planning Tool, a GIS-based analysis toolkit to evaluate user-designed land use and restoration scenarios for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and Suisun Marsh. This free mapping toolbox brings together ten years of science-based research and peer-reviewed methods for California’s Delta-Suisun region.
![Photo Credits: Micha Salomon (L), Dee Shea Himes (R)](https://www.sfei.org/sites/default/files/styles/portfolio_sm/public/projects/HealthyWatershedsResilientBaylands.jpg?itok=3nbBLx57&c=63c841a77d60371fb78dcb9fab0438de)
Through the EPA-funded Healthy Watersheds Resilient Baylands project, SFEI and sixteen partner organizations are developing multi-benefit tools to enhance climate change resilience in San Francisco Bay. Healthy Watersheds Resilient Baylands has two major components: Multi-benefit Urban Greening and Tidal Wetlands Restoration. Through both components, we have developed strategies that inform policy, planning, and design of innovative implementation projects.
![Photo credit: Elaine Blok, USFWS](https://www.sfei.org/sites/default/files/styles/portfolio_sm/public/projects/Russian_River_EBlok.jpg?itok=tS4uOLcQ&c=8e29e08ac3ec08c7058e49c6c021e16c)
This project will build on existing projects funded by the CA State Water Board, Ocean Protection Council, Sonoma Ecology Center, and Sonoma County to produce a basemap of aquatic resources, using the updated Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) of the California Aquatic Resource Inventory (CARI), including at-risk waters and their riparian areas, to support the Russian River Regional Monitoring Program (R3MP). The main tasks of the project are to:
Two key reports support nature-based solutions. Green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) and enhancements to the urban tree canopy offer benefits to stormwater management, urban ecological improvements, and complementary urban greening activities.
On KGO TV, these projects were featured on July 1, 2021.
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SFEI worked with local, state, and federal science experts to develop the new Sediment for Survival report. The report provides a regional sediment strategy aimed at examining the future of sediment in the Bay and informing sediment management for the resilience of tidal marshes and tidal flats to climate change.
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.
The release of “Towards a Coarse Sediment Strategy for the Bay Area” represents a step forward towards beneficially reusing coarse flood control channel sediment by outlining reuse challenges, and identifying incentives for participation and potential solutions.
![Coyote Creek near Embedded Way. Photo by SFEI.](https://www.sfei.org/sites/default/files/styles/portfolio_sm/public/projects/ccneet.png?itok=pEAifZcx&c=5c68eb142217e3ec041c899005f3677c)
The Coyote Creek Native Ecosystem Enhancement Tool (CCNEET, neet. ecoatlas.org) is an online decision-support tool to identify opportunities to improve ecological conditions. CCNEET was inspired by the need for a watershed approach to environmental resource management. Available ecological and environmental information is synthesized by objectives, management questions, and enhancement actions to identify and justify potential habitat improvements along the creek corridor. The overarching goal of CCNEET is to help coordinate habitat conservation and enhancement along so that multiple projects and limited funding can result in meaningful ecological improvement.
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