Salt ponds in Redwood City where the new Saltworks development is proposed. Photo: Lauren Sommer.

What do Bay Area airports and some big Silicon Valley companies have in common? They sit right on the edge of San Francisco Bay, where sea level rise is expected to have a big impact by the end of the century.

That may seem far in the future, but state agencies are preparing for climate change now by writing new rules for construction along the bay's shoreline. As you can imagine, developers and environmentalists aren't exactly seeing eye to eye.

That's evident on a patch of land at the edge of the bay in Redwood City. For more than a century, it's been home to one thing: salt.

"As you look out, you can see it looks sort of like a frozen pond," says David Smith, a Senior Vice President with DMB Associates. He's standing next to flat, industrial ponds filled with crystallizing salt. "On a typical season, you would hope to establish a layer of 8 to 12 inches."

Cargill Salt owns these ponds as part of their salt-harvesting operations. Smith is with a developer that's working with Cargill on a different vision for these more than 1400 acres.

"Welcome to the Redwood City Saltworks site," he says. Saltworks is DMB's proposal for 8,000 to 12,000 new housing units. "Half of the site would be dedicated to open spaces uses including tidal marsh restoration and then the other half would be this integrated, transit-oriented development."

Smith says it's housing that's sorely needed in the Bay Area. "You have had the explosion of economic success of Silicon Valley. We should be ashamed of our inability or unwillingness to provide housing to support those workers and that economic activity."

David Lewis, Executive Director of Save the Bay, is on the other side of the issue. "This site is not a site for housing," he says.

"Salt ponds in Redwood City are actually one of the last unprotected areas that could be restored to tidal marsh for San Francisco Bay."

It seems like a pretty typical story: a developer wants prime land to build on and environmental groups want to see wildlife habitat restored. But there's a twist, as David Smith points to on one particular map.

Bay Waters Rising

"What we're looking at is a blue inundation zone and it depicts the projections for sea level rise for the region around Redwood City," Smith says, pointing to map showing the low-lying parts of the bay's shoreline at risk from sea level rise – which includes the land we're standing on.

Smith says their plan calls for a three mile levee to protect the development from the bay. Projections from state scientists show sea level could rise by nearly six feet by the end of the century.

"We'd like to ignore it. But if we ignore it, we're ignoring it at our own economic peril," says Will Travis, Executive Director of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission. BCDC is the state agency with jurisdiction over the bay.

"We're building things now that will be around for a hundred years. And we should, we believe, think about how those cities, how those communities will remain viable and sustainable," he says.

BCDC is writing new regulations for development along the shore, which they'll use in future permitting decisions. They've been guided by a state plan from the Schwarzenegger administration called the California Climate Adaptation Strategy. It discourages building in low-lying areas and encourages wetland restoration.

"Wetlands are wonderful for dealing with climate change. Wetlands soak up flood water. So the wider the wetland in the front, the lower the levee can be in the back," says Travis.

Battle Over Shoreline Rules

But when BCDC released the first draft of its new development policy two years ago, the agency faced a wave of protest, especially from folks who see bay front property as prime real estate.

"It tried to do too much too fast," says Jim Wunderman, president of the Bay Area Council, a group representing business interests.

"We should be absolutely concerned about sea level rise, but we shouldn't allow the concern about it to say let's just stop doing everything," he says.

A number of bay-front cities had the same complaint. Public meetings got ugly. "People said things that they probably weren't proud of when the meeting was over and I know we've had epithets hurled at us," says Wunderman.

So BCDC backed off a little, saying that new development would be considered on a case by case basis. David Lewis of Save the Bay says those changes concern him, because the policy is leading the way for others.

"Most small cities don't have the resources to change the way they plan and permit developments with a big change like sea level rise. I think BCDC's at the forefront and it should be brave about doing the right thing," says Lewis.

Will Travis of BCDC says the changes were necessary, so the plan works for the dozens of cities it involves. "We want to achieve environmental protection. We have to, but not at the expense of regional prosperity. So we're trying to achieve that balance."

The challenge, Travis says, is making a global issue like climate change part of regional planning.

"A society likes dealing with climate change at the abstract. It's when you actually get down to doing something about it that people have concerns."

In October, BCDC expects to finalize the sea level rise policy that will govern development along San Francisco Bay for years to come.

Additional Links

• More about BCDC's Sea Level Rise Plan
• San Francisco Bay Sea Level Rise Map

A California gull tagged by USGS scientists. Credit: Josh Ackerman/USGS

One of the most ambitious wetland restoration projects in the country is underway in San Francisco Bay. For more than a century, the South Bay shoreline has been home to industrial salt ponds. Now, thousands of acres of those ponds are being restored for shorebirds and wildlife. But that is creating an opportunity for a very problematic bird.

The Bay Area's gulls are well-known to San Francisco Giants fans. At one recent game, as the Giants staged a late comeback during the ninth inning hundreds of gulls appeared out of the night sky. Like clockwork, they show up just before the game ends.

"Don't ask me how. They just know," says Mike Krukow, a broadcaster with the Giants. "They come in and it's always with two outs to go in the ninth inning and there they are."

The attraction, of course, is the food. "It's pizza. They've got garlic fries. They really love the garlic fries by the way," he says.

How gulls time their arrival so well is a little bit of a mystery. But their numbers have grown so high that the ballpark is considering bringing in a falcon to scare them away. But that's not possible everywhere…

South Bay Shorebirds on the Menu

At the southern end of the bay near Alviso, a crew from the US Geological Survey is working on a small island in the middle of a former salt pond. It's home to a colony of Forster's terns.

"Hey, what was the band number on that chick?" asks Garth Herring, one of the scientists on the project. The team measures and bands the small, speckled tern chicks. A few of them get radio transmitters.

"When that transmitter is attached to a live chick, the transmitter beeps at a very specific rate," says Herring.

If the chick dies, the beep slows down. But you might wonder – why do they need to know if a chick is dead?

"Just to the north of us roughly about a mile, there's one of the largest California gull colonies. They'll come in, grab the chick. And they get back to the gull colony and they regurgitate to their chicks," he says.

At which point the tern chick – and transmitter – is inside the gull – until it passes through, that is. That's when Herring and his team go looking for it.

"It's pretty common that we find just a small pile of bones, the radio transmitter and the band that was associated with that Forster's tern chick," says Herring.

Herring says they've found that gulls only prey on the terns at certain times of day. "It's timed pretty well with when the local landfill sites are closing down. They're flying back to the colonies and are picking up chicks probably around 6 o'clock on average."

Last year, 40 percent of the tern chicks they tagged were eaten by gulls. "It certainly does suggest that California gulls do have the potential to have a big impact on these breeding water birds here," he says.

Gulls Gone Wild

"They're the big bully," says Cheryl Strong , a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "They're very opportunistic and they do really well with humans."

California gulls didn't always call San Francisco Bay home. In the 1980s, a small group began nesting on one of the salt ponds. Now, that population has exploded.

"California gulls are one of the earliest nesting species and they're also probably the most aggressive. So they show up first that they can easily take over an area," says Strong.

The South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project has spent millions restoring pond habitat for Forster's terns, American avocets and the threatened western snowy plover.

But it's a conservation Catch-22. As more habitat is restored for shorebirds, it also creates more habitat for gulls. And as former salt ponds are flooded during the restoration, the gulls are looking for new places to nest.

"With 40,000 gulls, there's not a lot of room for other birds," says Strong.

Strong says the Fish and Wildlife Service is writing a plan to manage the gulls. One option is killing the birds. But gulls can live up to 25 years and with an endless food source at landfills nearby, she says there's only so much they could do.

"If you're talking about removing birds lethally, it's just not feasible. They are a part of our landscape, like it or not," she says.

For now, they're trying something else.

Gull Hazing Underway

"So up ahead there are some gulls doing some courtship behaviors on the levee which is definitely a bad sign," says Caitlin Robinson-Nilsen of the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory. She's looking at a large flock of gulls on a salt pond near Fremont.

"This is one of the areas where we definitely don't want them to nest. One of the salt ponds we're standing right next to is a historic nesting site of the western snowy plover."

So, Robinson-Nilsen's job is to haze the gulls. She uses a whistle and walks down the levee. The gulls aren't happy about it.

"They'll dive bomb you and hit you in your head. They're very good at pooping you. They have pretty good aim that way."

Robinson-Nislen says they're hazing gulls twice a day to keep them from nesting next to sensitive shorebirds. So far, it looks like it's working. But with millions of tax dollars being spent on restoring more habitat, biologists expect they'll be doing a lot more gull management in the years ahead.

Additional Links

• South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project
• Help Track the California Gull

Generally speaking, these habitats are the marshes, sand beaches, mudflats and the shallow waters of our rivers and creeks whose soil is saturated with moisture either permanently or seasonally; such areas may also be covered partially or completely by shallow pools of water.

They are also nature’s best defense against climate change and subsequent sea-level rise, because of two important functions they perform: they help reduce the concentrations of greenhouse gases through their ability to sink carbon; and store and regulate water. In other words, they act as sponges absorbing any overflow of water.

The federal government came to understand how biologically productive wetlands are and in 1977 enacted the Clean Water Act, the primary federal law in the US governing water pollution and limiting wetlands destruction. The law also created requirements that if a wetland had to be drained, developers at least had to offset the loss by creating artificial wetlands.

Wetlands have historically been the victim of large-scale draining efforts for real estate development, flooding them for use as recreational lakes or agriculture. Ironically, wetlands absorb and protect the surrounding ecosystem from the polluted run-off coming from the agricultural lands that displaced them.

Since 2000, more than 300 wetland restoration projects have been commissioned, varying in size from the 0.7-acre large 12^th Street Reconstruction Project in Alameda County to more than 13,000 acres being restored as a part of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project in San Mateo County. However, the collective size of the projects (58,889.5 acres across California) is dwarfed when you consider that the state has lost 95 percent of its wetland habitat in the past 125 years.

Worldwide, it is estimated that by 1993 half of the Earth’s wetlands had been drained, according to a report published in the New Scientist.

Below you’ll find a map detailing the restoration projects taking place in the San Francisco Bay Area that shows information of their size, location and construction status.

View Wetland Restoration Projects–Northern California in a larger map

Listen to The Changing Bay radio report online.

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This is one of those environmental stories where one event, seemingly far in the past, can have a surprising ripple effect into the future. Most of us think of the Gold Rush and picture prospectors panning for gold in streams and rivers. But some miners used more industrial techniques like hydraulic mining. Using massive, pressurized hoses, they washed down entire mountainsides to get to the gold. (Check out this clip from the KQED special "Saving the Bay" for more).

As a result, millions of tons of sediment washed into rivers and streams in the Sierra foothills and made its way down to San Francisco Bay.  Amazingly, that process has taken decades, creating a murkier bay in the meantime.  Ten years ago, scientists at the US Geological Survey noticed the bay was clearing. While that can have many causes, scientists believe that the sediment pulse from the Gold Rush had finally worked its way out of the system.

It seems like the story would end there, but sediment has a complex role in the bay. Some ecosystems, especially wetlands, depend on sediment.  Salt marshes are built on every high tide by sediment that gets trapped in the plants.  These wetlands are also continually sinking as the soil settles, so this growth is key for keeping them at the right elevation. Less sediment in the bay means there's less for the wetlands, which could be an issue. But there's one thing that makes it worse: sea level rise. Some estimates say that the bay could rise by 55 inches by the end of the century.  That means sediment will have an increasingly important role in the future, one that state agencies are just starting to plan for.

Listen to The Changing Bay radio report online.

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Cris Benton inspects his kite aerial photography rig
before sending it up in the sky. Credit: Jane Liaw.

UC Berkeley architecture professor Charles 'Cris' Benton is a kite aerial photography (KAP) enthusiast. Benton is well-known in the KAP world for sharing his knowledge and love of the art.

In this art form, a camera is carried aloft by a kite and operated remotely from the ground. The pictures taken provide a bird's-eye view that can’t be seen from the ground or an airplane. Benton's Web site, chock full of information and gorgeous photos, has attracted numerous newbies to KAP.

I am profiling Benton for the UC Santa Cruz Science Communication Program. As I was casting around for an interesting scientist to write about, Benton stood out to me. He has a distinct and coherent philosophy that extends through both work and hobby.

Benton explains his attraction to KAP on the Web site:

Kite aerial photography appeals to that part of me, perhaps of all of us, that would slip our earthly bonds and see the world from new heights. An aerial view offers a fresh perspective of familiar landscapes and in doing so challenges our spatial sensibilities, our grasp of relationships.

KAP is a natural fit for Benton, who says architects also think about bird's-eye perspectives and relationships between buildings in the landscape.

KAP was invented more than a century ago, but fell out of favor as military and commercial photography from airplanes became popular. In past few decades, artists interested in a unique perspective from the sky have revived the art. Today, thousands of people worldwide pursue KAP, and Benton is one respected example. He builds the rigs that hold his camera aloft from parts he finds around the house. The camera cradle, for instance, is re-purposed from an old computer hard drive. Benton, who took his first aerial photographs at Cesar Chavez Park in 1995, has built every rig himself; he's now on his tenth.

Benton's creation is impressive. He has set a camera in a wooden frame, and engineered a remote mechanism that pushes the shutter button and can move his camera to vertical or horizontal positions. To take his aerial photos, he handles the spool of kite string with one hand and works the radio controller that remotely manipulates the camera with the other.

At Cesar Chavez Park today, I watch as Benton hooks the kite to a park bench after it's aloft, then attaches the camera to the kite line, rigged in a pulley system that allows Benton to move the camera up and down the line. He snaps a few photos of himself at different heights to show me.

Benton peers up at his rig as he positions it for some
photo-taking. Credit: Jane Liaw.
Benton doesn't use real-time video to help compose his shots, as some kite aerial photographers do. With video, the photographer on the ground sees exactly what the camera's shot will look like. Instead, Benton "interrogates the landscape." He thinks through the shot, forms a hypothesis on what he might see if he were looking through the camera lens in the sky, takes the picture, and compares his imaginings to the actual shot.

Benton has in recent years developed a fascination with the south San Francisco Bay. For several years, he has been documenting the area as part of the San Francisco Exploratorium’s Hidden Ecologies project. Benton takes kite aerial photographs of the South Bay salt flats and other Bay geographies, while a microbiologist takes "microcinematography"– photos of tiny critters such as bacteria and diatoms that inhabit these ecosystems, captured with the help of field microscopes.

Benton has published his photos on a blog: majestic overviews of the South Bay salt ponds that run the color spectrum from red to green to pink, depending on how the microscopic organisms adapt to varying salinity levels.

Cris will be collaborating with KQED staff on our next 2-minute "Your Photos on QUEST" segment for broadcast and web distribution. It will air on August 26, 2008.

His stunning set of Kite Aerial Photography of South San Francisco Bay did a wonderful job of expressing a sense of locale, with a passion for nature, via a process that captures something unexpected and essential.

In his own words:

"…juxtapositions abound – dendritic marsh channels as foils for the straight lines of infrastructure; wild openness confronting the confines of encroaching capitalism; salt ponds, vividly colored by the aforementioned halophiles, constrained by subtly hued mud and marsh; derelict, forgotten engineering works faintly echoing their former functions. ."

Benton makes his own kite rigs, but if you're interested in taking up the hobby and are daunted by putting together your own equipment, you can also buy ready-made rigs online from Brooks Leffler, a pioneer of modern KAP.

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Quest Educational Resources

 Print Guide - Don Edwards SF Bay National Wildlife Refuge

 Don Edwards SF Bay National Wildlife Refuge

 Tips to get the kids in your life out into nature

 Designing an Exploration on Google Maps

Additional Links

• Openspace.org – Your Preserves – Los Trancos
• Quake: Real-time shaking maps
• Maps of Recent Earthquake Activity: SF Bay Area
• Exploratorium: Faultline, Live Eye on the Earth