Spring 2019

Wetland Regional Monitoring Program (WRMP): Applying geospatial insight to coordinated wetland monitoring and management

March 6th, 1:30pm-4:30pm

SF Estuary Institute in Richmond, CA 

Meeting Summary

This meeting focused on discussing how the San Francisco Estuary Geospatial Working Group (SFEGWG) might help support coordinated wetland monitoring and the Wetland Regional Monitoring Program (WRMP). Members of the SFEGWG presented on the structure, function, and goals of the SFEGWG and highlighted member projects that might have relevance to the WRMP. Following the SFEGWG presentation, staff from the WRMP presented on the goals and data needs of the regional monitoring program. We heard about the existing monitoring efforts, identified requirements for developing the regional monitoring program plan, and how they propose to answer management questions. Following the presentations, the group discussed strategies for data collection, management, interoperability, and visualization. The conclusion of the meeting involved members voting on future meeting topics. 

Agenda

1. Introduction

• • • • Tony Hale welcomed attendees to SFEI and discussed the purpose of the meeting. This meeting is a chance to introduce these two regional groups, learn about one the groups goals and strengths, and discover ways that they can support one another. 

2. Wetland Regional Monitoring Program (WRMP) Presentation 

• • • • Ian Kelmartin presented on the WRMP goals, structure, management questions, and timeline. He touched on how the WRMP is considering data management and data collection as areas that the SFEGWG might be able to weigh in or contribute. 

      • WRMP Website: https://www.sfestuary.org/wrmp/

3. San Francisco Estuary Geospatial Working Group (SFEGWG) Presentation

• • • • Tony Hale, Jared Lewis, and Todd Hallenbeck provided an overview of the SFEGWG, including membership, organizing questions, key focus areas, and highlighting past projects that have been discussed at SFEGWG meetings. 

4. SFEGWG and WRMP Group Discussion 

• • • • The group broke into small groups to discuss ideas for how the SFEGWG could support and inform the WRMP. The groups focused specific topic areas related to these discussion questions.

        • For the scale/goals of the WRMP, what are best available data collection technologies? 

        • What would be data access/data visualization goals?

        • What data management pitfalls should this effort try to avoid?

        • How do we ensure that data collected can be interoperable at regional scale?

      • Following the discussion, the groups reported out on possible ideas. 

        • Data Collection & Visualization

          • Data collection plan by WRMP 

            • Aerial imagery every 5 years (RGB and NIR)

            • Collected during low tides, collect LiDAR at the same time

            • Multiple scales, data collection depends on monitoring question and resolution needed

          • Coordinating efforts by local jurisdictions, e.g. Counties, Park Districts, Flood Districts, etc.:

            • Develop SOP for imagery and LiDAR collection by local jurisdictions so that it could be leveraged and integrated into WRMP opportunistically

          • Planes and Drones

            • Issues with air space regulations

            • Issues with consistency of capture height

            • Issues with stitching images

          • Satellites

            • Should encourage leveraging free remote sensing

            • Planet offers California embargoed downloads

            • Sentinel-2 from ESA

            • Hyperspectral data hopefully coming in near future

            • Integrate these as a backstop

          • Metrics that can be collected

            • Ratio of vegetated marsh to open marsh

          • Baseline attributes to standardize

            • Common attributes that can be collected by all entities

        • Data Management & Interoperability

          • Data Interoperability

            • Driven by priorities that WRMP establishes

            • Once these are identified, one can begin to think of schema of the data, SOPs, data collection tools

            • Citizen-science at some point?

              • Tools required to collect data

            • Hard to talk about data management before types of data have been decided

            • Public data needs to be publicly accessible

              • Standardize methods, may not always be possible

              • Does there have to be a data integrator involved?

              • How is it distributed to regulatory agencies and land managers?

5. Conclusion

• • • • The group weighed in via Poll Everywhere on ways the SFEGWG can support the WRMP, topics for a future meetings, topics to prioritize for the next meeting.