Melissa Foley
Melissa Foley, PhD
Program Managing Director
Clean Water Program
Bay Regional Monitoring Program
Bay RMP
Nutrients
Urban Nature Lab
(510)746-7345
Melissa Foley is the Managing Director for the San Francisco Bay Regional Monitoring Program. She has been involved in multiple long-term monitoring programs in coastal and marine habitats for over twenty years. She also has extensive experience working in interdisciplinary teams, including scientists, lawyers, decision makers, tribal members, and stakeholders on a wide range of topics, including water quality, wildfire, dam removal, cross-habitat connectivity, ocean acidification, cumulative effects, and ecosystem-based management. Melissa received her B.S. from Oregon State University and her PhD in Ecology from the University of California Santa Cruz.
Related Projects, News, and Events

The Regional Monitoring Program for Water Quality in San Francisco Bay is an innovative collaboration of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, the regulated discharger community, and the San Francisco Estuary Institute. It provides water quality regulators with the information they need to manage the Bay effectively. The RMP produces two types of summary reports: The Pulse of the Bay and the RMP Update. The Pulse focuses on Bay water quality and summarizes information from all sources.

When it comes to plastic pollution, that candy wrapper half buried in the dirt is only the tip of the iceberg. Plastic bags, cigarette butts, and bottle caps are not just an eyesore, but over time they break down in the environment, creating small pieces of debris known as microplastics. Microplastics can include anything from synthetic fibers of clothing to industrial pellets from the plastic manufacturing process. Microplastics are now ubiquitous in our environment--found in our air, drinking water, sediment, and in the San Francisco Bay and global ocean.

The San Francisco Estuary Partnership (SFEP) brings together the estuarine community every two years at the State of the Estuary Conference and, periodically, SFEP also reports on the State of the Estuary, summarizing the latest scientific findings about ecosystem health. This State of the Estuary Report is the only place where a holistic view of ecosystem function is provided across both the Bay and the Delta. This year, SFEI provided scientific leadership and technical support for the report, which focuses on the ties between social and ecological resilience for our estuary.

SFEI is very pleased to announce that Dr. Melissa Foley joined our staff as the new RMP Manager in late December. She is a marine ecologist by training but an interdisciplinary scientist in practice. She has extensive experience working with scientists, lawyers, decision-makers, tribes, and stakeholders on a wide range of topics, including water quality, wildfire, dam removal, cross-habitat connectivity, ocean acidification, spatial planning, cumulative effects, ecological tipping points, and ecosystem-based management.