Wetlands
Wetlands are keystone ecosystems in the San Francisco Bay Area. Some ecologists call wetlands "the kidneys of the landscape" as they provide water quality protection, flood and drought mitigation, erosion control, and groundwater recharge functions. Wetlands have also been called "biological supermarkets," for supporting complex food webs, housing a rich biodiversity of wetland-endemic species, and providing habitat functions for many aquatic and terrestrial species. An estimated 46% of US endangered and threatened species and 50% of all bird species require wetland habitat. Wetland habitats are vulnerable to alteration due to global climate change and associated potential temperature, hydrology, and salinity regime changes. Understanding the condition of wetlands in SFAN parks may be a good proxy for understanding the condition of many taxa of concern in the network. more >>
Reports & Resources
Contact Information Marie Denn |
Monitoring ObjectivesDetermine if the extent, type, condition and function of wetlands is changing. |
Monitoring ProtocolThe wetlands monitoring program will be built upon wetland inventories that have already been completed in SFAN parks. These inventories resulted in a map of wetland polygons. A set of polygons from this map will be selected for cyclic monitoring on a “fixed site + rotating panel” design. Mapped wetland polygons will be stratified first by type, then by predominant stressor type (e.g., grazing, adjacent development, invasive species, no evident threat). Wetland polygons will be sampled from the resulting data set so that each major type is well represented. Samples will not be random, but may be chosen for accessibility and representativeness. Because wetlands in Wilderness portions of SFAN parks are not expected to change as rapidly as wetlands on non-Wilderness lands, cyclic monitoring will more heavily focus on wetlands that are subjected to known stressors. These selected wetlands will be sampled quantitatively for integrity indicators such as water quality, water quantity, channel sinuosity and entrenchment, exotic plant cover, plant diversity, and percentage of obligate wetland plants. The specific Vital Signs to be measured at each wetland polygon are to be determined. SFAN staff is working with an interagency group, based in Northern and Southern California, which is currently developing a quantitative monitoring program for assessing wetland integrity and changes. This protocol has high potential to form the foundation of a wetlands monitoring program for SFAN, the purpose of which will be to assess local-scale, rapid response of wetlands to management and land use change. |