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California Oyster Restoration in the Face of Climate Change
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 | What's happening?
California’s San Francisco Bay and Elkhorn Slough Reserves have teamed up with local partners to develop science-based tools to support native Olympia oyster restoration efforts in the face of climate change. The project is using an adapted version of the Joint Fact Finding method to create a flexible feedback loop between the team’s scientists and the policy-makers and restoration practioners who need new planning tools to select native oyster conservation sites that will be successful under future climate conditions. Potential tools include web-based syntheses, decision-support tools, and/or interactive maps tailored to the needs of intended users. The team also plans to share lessons learned in a user-friendly synthesis for those working at local, regional, or international levels. Information about the progress on this project is available at www.sfbaysubtidal.org/oysters_and_climate-about.html
Why this project? Oysters protect water quality, create habitat for ecologically and economically important species, and protect shorelines from extreme storms and erosion. Unfortunately, native oyster populations along the Pacific Coast are in decline, in part because of overharvesting and human activities that spread invasive species, increase sedimentation, and create low oxygen conditions in coastal waters. Oysters also may be threatened by climate-related changes in water salinity, temperature, and acidity—all of which can reduce their growth and survival. Over the past decade, this decline has prompted native oyster restoration projects in San Francisco Bay and Elkhorn Slough. Managers and decision-makers involved in these projects face the complex challenge of designing conservation and restoration strategies that will enable oyster populations to prove resilient as changes in climate interact with the influence of human activities to impact coastal ecosystems. Meeting this challenge requires planning tools that can answer questions such as... - How does climate impact critical oyster resources?
- How does climate interact with human activities to affect critical resources for oyster populations?
- Does decreasing other human-induced stressors increase oyster resilience to climatic changes?
- Does the capacity for local oyster populations to adapt and spread beyond their population boundaries make them more resilient in the face of climate change?
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Last Updated on: Thursday, December 13, 2012
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