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CISNet San Pablo Network of Environmental Stress Indicators
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January 1, 1999 - December 31, 2002
Funding Agency: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Investigators: Geoff Schladow 1, Tom Young 1, Inge Werner 2,
Bruce Thompson 3, Nadav Nur 4, Dave Schoellhamer 5
(please reference below)
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Project Summary:
San Pablo Bay is a sub-embayment of San Francisco Bay. It does not have direct connection to the Pacific Ocean. San Pablo Bay receives water from several major tributaries: Gallinas Creek, Novato Creek, Petaluma River, Sonoma Creek, Wildcat Creek and Napa River. Of these, the Petaluma and Napa Rivers are largest. However, the major sources of water to the bay are the Sacramento/San Joaquin delta to the east, and the ocean tides. San Pablo Bay is at the confluence of several major environmental stressors. These include sediment loads and pesticide residues from California's Central Valley, the Sierra Nevada and the coastal range; industrial waste from the San Francisco Bay Area, (including several oil refineries); and the site of the Mare Island Naval Shipyard (now closed).
Objectives and Hypotheses:
The primary objective of this project is to design a monitoring network that is temporally and spatially adequate to provide advance warning of the ecological impacts of natural and anthropogenic stressors. A central hypothesis is that understanding fluxes and variations in stressors within the system at a range of timescales will permit optimal selection of monitoring locations and temporal frequencies for long-term CISNet monitoring. The parameters to be monitored at these sites will be established by testing an extensive set of potential indicators, including chemical, biochemical and ecological variables. Careful attention to indicator selection should allow the overall health of San Pablo Bay to be assessed without monitoring a financially prohibitive set of parameters over the long term.
References:
1 Department of Civil Environmental Engineering, University of California, Davis, CA
2 Department of Anatomy, Physiology and Cell Biology, School of Veterinary Medicine, UC Davis, CA
3 San Francisco Estuary Institute, Oakland, CA
4 Point Reyes Bird Observatory, Bolinas, CA
5 U.S. Geological Survey, Sacramento, CA
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