Sacramento River

Report on Feasibility of Feather River Project and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Diversion Projects Proposed as Features of the California Water Plan

California Department of Water Resources (DWR) | May 17th, 1951

Report on the Delta Drought Response Pilot Program for Water Year 2023

Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Conservancy | July 24th, 2024

This report describes the 2023 Delta Drought Response Pilot Program (DDRPP/Program), provides an analysis of the Program’s effectiveness, and describes the Program outc

This report describes the 2023 Delta Drought Response Pilot Program (DDRPP/Program), provides an analysis of the Program’s effectiveness, and describes the Program outcomes, including findings and recommendations for application in future agricultural water conservation programs. The DDRPP launched in January 2022 as a response to the continuing risk of drought in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Watershed. This report focuses on the results of the 2023 Program, with a brief analysis comparing both years of the Program. For detailed information on the 2022 Program and 2022 analysis, see the 2022 DDRPP Final Report (Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Conservancy, 2023).

Resilient by Design Bay Area Challenge Briefing Book

San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI) | July 1st, 2017

The Resilient by Design Bay Area Challenge Briefing Book is intended as a reference guide for Design Teams as they embark on the Challenge. The aim is to provide com

The Resilient by Design Bay Area Challenge Briefing Book is intended as a reference guide for Design Teams as they embark on the Challenge. The aim is to provide compilation of useful existing resources and context pertaining to resilience in the Bay Area.

Resilient landscape vision for Lower Walnut Creek

San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI) | November 30th, 2016

Lower Walnut Creek (Contra Costa County, CA) and its surrounding landscape have undergone considerable land reclamation and development since the mid-nineteenth century.

Lower Walnut Creek (Contra Costa County, CA) and its surrounding landscape have undergone considerable land reclamation and development since the mid-nineteenth century. In 1965, the lower 22 miles of Walnut Creek and the lower reaches of major tributaries were converted to flood control channels to protect the surrounding developed land. In the recent past, sediment was periodically removed from the lower Walnut Creek Flood Control Channel to provide flow capacity and necessary flood protection. Due to the wildlife impacts and costs associated with this practice, the Contra Costa County Flood Control and Water Conservation District (District) is now seeking a new channel management approach that works with natural processes and benefits people and wildlife in a cost-effective manner. Flood Control 2.0 project scientists and a Regional Science Advisory Team (RSAT) worked with the District to develop a long-term management Vision for lower Walnut Creek that could result in a multi-benefit landscape that restores lost habitat and is resilient under a changing climate. Development of the Vision began with technical analyses focused on understanding past and present landscape functioning and the changes to key processes and landscape features over the past 150 to 200 years. The key findings from these analyses include the following: • Landscape change – During the mid-19th century, lower Walnut Creek was surrounded by a continuous expanse of tidal wetlands occupying approximately 5,000 acres. Perennial freshwater marsh, willow thicket, and alkali meadow formed a large non-tidal wetland complex that adjoined the tidal marsh on its southern end. Over the past century and a half, the non-tidal wetland complex has been lost completely and the tidal wetland area has decreased by 40%. The remaining marsh areas are highly fragmented and cut-off from Walnut Creek by engineered levees. The loss of tidal wetland area has resulted in a substantial decrease in tidal prism and contributed to current in-channel sediment accumulation issues. Around the mouth of Walnut Creek, sediment accumulation has caused the position of the shoreline to expand into the Bay by up to half a mile. • Sediment accumulation – Since 1965, approximately 1.4M cubic yards of sediment have been removed from lower Walnut Creek, with approximately 70% coming from the tidal zone downstream of head of tide (i.e., the inland extent of tidal inundation at mean higher high water). Repeat channel cross-section surveys indicate that the channel quickly fills in with sediment following dredging events (due in large part to decreased tidal prism and associated channel scour capacity) and that the channel bed elevation is currently at or near “quasi-equilibrium.” A channel sediment budget for 1965-2007 indicates that approximately 80% of the watershed-derived sediment made it through lower Walnut Creek and out to the Bay, while the remaining 20% was likely deposited directly following channel construction and subsequent dredging events.

Resilient Landscape Vision for Lower Walnut Creek: Baseline Information and Management Strategies

San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI) | November 1st, 2016

Lower Walnut Creek (Contra Costa County, CA) and its surrounding landscape have undergone considerable land reclamation and development since the mid-nineteenth century.

Lower Walnut Creek (Contra Costa County, CA) and its surrounding landscape have undergone considerable land reclamation and development since the mid-nineteenth century. In 1965, the lower 22 miles of Walnut Creek and the lower reaches of major tributaries were converted to flood control channels to protect the surrounding developed land. In the recent past, sediment was periodically removed from the lower Walnut Creek Flood Control Channel to provide flow capacity and necessary flood protection. Due to the wildlife impacts and costs associated with this practice, the Contra Costa County Flood Control and Water Conservation District (District) is now seeking a new channel management approach that works with natural processes and benefits people and wildlife in a cost-effective manner. Flood Control 2.0 project scientists and a Regional Science Advisory Team (RSAT) worked with the District to develop a long-term management Vision for lower Walnut Creek that could result in a multi-benefit landscape that restores lost habitat and is resilient under a changing climate. 

Response of the upper ocean to northeast Pacific atmospheric rivers under climate change

Nature Portfolio (Springer Nature) | October 19th, 2024

Click here for a plain language summary from the National Center for Atmospheric Research

Click here for a plain language summary from the National Center for Atmospheric Research

Response to the Delta Science Program and Independent Review Panel Report from the 2015 Annual Review of the Long-term Operation Biological Opinions (2015 Annual Review) (January 29, 2016)

Delta Stewardship Council (Delta Council) | January 29th, 2016

Responses and impacts of atmospheric rivers to climate change

Nature Portfolio (Springer Nature) | March 9th, 2020

Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are characterized by intense moisture transport, which, on landfall, produce precipitation which can be both beneficial and destructive. ARs in C

Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are characterized by intense moisture transport, which, on landfall, produce precipitation which can be both beneficial and destructive. ARs in California, for example, are known to have ended drought conditions but also to have caused substantial socio-economic damage from landslides and flooding linked to extreme precipitation. Understanding how AR characteristics will respond to a warming climate is, therefore, vital to the resilience of communities affected by them, such as the western USA, Europe, East Asia and South Africa. In this Review, we use a theoretical framework to synthesize understanding of the dynamic and thermodynamic responses of ARs to anthropogenic warming and connect them to observed and projected changes and impacts revealed by observations and complex models. Evidence suggests that increased atmospheric moisture (governed by Clausius–Clapeyron scaling) will enhance the intensity of AR-related precipitation — and related hydrological extremes — but with changes that are ultimately linked to topographic barriers. However, due to their dependency on both weather and climate-scale processes, which themselves are often poorly constrained, projections are uncertain. To build confidence and improve resilience, future work must focus efforts on characterizing the multiscale development of ARs and in obtaining observations from understudied regions, including the West Pacific, South Pacific and South Atlantic.

Restoring Habitat with Science and Society in Mind

Delta Stewardship Council (Delta Council) | April 8th, 2014

This Issue Paper, authored by Jessica Davenport, the Council's Program Manager for Ecosystem Restoration and Land Use, is entitled Restoring Habitat with Science and Soci

This Issue Paper, authored by Jessica Davenport, the Council's Program Manager for Ecosystem Restoration and Land Use, is entitled Restoring Habitat with Science and Society in Mind.  The purpose of the 22-page paper is to survey restoration activities in the Delta; describe the needs, progress and opportunities related to restoration; and propose key areas of focus for the Delta Stewardship Council and other agencies to advance habitat restoration. Some of the areas of focus for Council staff for the next two years include: Continue to provide early consultation on habitat restoration projects that are Covered Actions under the Delta Plan in order to advise project proponents on using best available science and adaptive management and avoiding or reducing conflicts with existing uses, where feasible. Report on habitat performance measures by December 2014 and again in December 2015. Work with others to complete at least one of the landscape-scale conceptual models and associated landscape habitat metrics for the priority habitat restoration areas. Enagage Delta Plan Interagency Implementation Committee members in discussions of challenges and potential solutions related to land acquistion and permit coordination.

Restoring the Heart of a Healthy Estuary: A Review of Restoration in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta and Suisun Marsh

Publisher not available | December 19th, 2025

The restoration of native species-dominated ecosystems is critical for improving ecosystem health and meeting policy goals in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta and Suisu

The restoration of native species-dominated ecosystems is critical for improving ecosystem health and meeting policy goals in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta and Suisun Marsh (upper San Francisco Estuary, collectively), one of the largest estuarine systems in North America. To accomplish large-scale restoration in this heavily altered system, a variety of projects, programs, and motivations inform restoration planning and implementation. Chapter 4 of the Delta Plan synthesizes restoration goals across these efforts to produce comprehensive ecosystem restoration targets of between 60,000 and 80,000 acres across seven ecosystem types by 2050, but a comprehensive review of restoration progress and planning to date is needed. To fill this gap, this paper analyzes the current state of ecosystem restoration in the upper San Francisco Estuary in the context of the Delta Plan targets. We review current scientific and management literature and implementation approaches, and synthesize acreage totals across completed, in-progress, and planned projects for four ecosystem types where substantial development of restoration in the system has occurred: tidal wetland, non-tidal wetland, riparian, and floodplain. We find that tidal wetland restoration has progressed more rapidly than other ecosystem types, motivated by mitigation requirements related to the federal Endangered Species Act. Across all ecosystem types, we identify both promising progress and clear needs for accelerated planning and implementation of restoration projects to meet Delta Plan 2050 targets, and discuss ongoing needs related to science, funding, and implementation.