Learn about Save The Bay’s cost-saving methods to revegetate and restore wildlife habitat at the Restoration Project's recently completed Ravenswood Ponds restoration site in Menlo Park. Jessie Olson, Habitat Restoration Director at Save The Bay, will discuss the techniques the non-profit has developed that can be scaled up while reducing costs and labor. Save The Bay planted on our newly constructed habitat transition zone slopes (also called “horizontal levees”) bordering restoring tidal marsh at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge.
- Registration link
- For more information about the presentation, contact Donna Ball, Restoration Project Lead Scientist, at [email protected].
Speaker Bio: Jessie Olson is Save The Bay’s Habitat Restoration Director. Along with a team of environmental educators and restoration practitioners, she leads a Bay-wide partner-driven and community-based restoration program. In over ten years at Save The Bay, she built the organization's diverse set of native plant nurseries to support new, larger transition zone habitat restoration projects on the shoreline. Jessie helped implement the planting plan of the first experimental horizontal levee project at Oro Loma Sanitary District, a prototype that can be replicated throughout the Bay. Prior to joining Save The Bay, she worked on riparian and grassland restoration projects in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and in private consulting.
Further Info on Topic: Save The Bay's work uses a mix of mechanized planting by heavy equipment with handwork by staff and volunteers to scatter native annual seed mix and plant seedlings. The method uses not only seeds and seedlings, but also rhizomatous, perennial native plant material collected from nearby South Bay populations and amplified in division beds. Save The Bay partnered with a nearby property owner, the West Bay Sanitary District, to construct the nursery beds.
Scientific Question: This research will help the Restoration Project answer a central scientific question in its Adaptive Management Plan under the topic of Tidal Marsh Habitat Establishment:
Is the tidal marsh vegetation/habitat mosaic, including transition zone habitat, on a trajectory toward successful marsh restoration?
Lunch and Learn Science Speaker Series
This presentation is one in a series put forth by the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project. The series addresses science and adaptive management done in support of or in collaboration with our Restoration Project as well as relevant outside work. Speakers discuss research, modeling, and monitoring efforts and how Restoration Project managers are using science to inform decisions about restoration, flood risk management, and public access.
Note: The date of this event was moved to Wednesday, March 14 to avoid overlap with another restoration-related event.