Concluding Remarks

Estuaries are among the most productive and diverse ecosystems on the planet. Surprisingly, they are home to more organisms per square inch than the Amazon rainforest (L). As a National Estuarine Research Reserve, degradation of the aquatic ecosystem of the San Francisco Bay Estuary due to increased salinity must not be allowed to happen. Many of the estuaries in this National Estuary Program have substantial commitments for restoration through pollution reduction, habitat rehabilitation, and more sustainable use of living resources, but few of the restoration plans take into account long-term, climate-influenced changes in precipitation, runoff regimes, and salinity.  Water management and land-use policies should anticipate changes in the amount and seasonal distribution of water availability, human demand, and the needs of the estuarine ecosystems (D). The United States Geological Survey (USGS), as a long-time leader in studies of the San Francisco Bay estuary, has provided much of the fundamental knowledge of the hydrology, geology, chemistry and ecology of this complex estuarine system. The USGS is now focusing field, laboratory and modeling studies on three main objectives, the first of which is to study the effects of freshwater flow on the estuary's chemistry and biology (A). The more information there is about the San Francisco Bay estuary's response to increasing salinities, the better managers will be able to plan accordingly.

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