Speaker: Michael Vasey, Ph.D.
For more than two decades, the Bay Area has invested almost a half billion dollars to restore 30,000 acres of tidal wetlands in the San Francisco Estuary (SFE). This remarkably successful effort to recover the SFE is now at risk, however, by a cascade of uncertainties associated with accelerating climate change. Dr. Mike Vasey, Director of the SF Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR), will review these new challenges facing Bay Area wetland recovery in the context of this past experience. He will explore how creativity, greater engagement, and focus on coastal resilience and adaptive management offers a path forward that may ultimately result in a better and more coherent outcome than originally envisioned.
Dr. Vasey is an evolutionary ecologist who taught conservation biology at San Francisco State for nearly 25 years. During that time, he spent 10 years coordinating the effort to designate the SF Bay NERR, a San Francisco State-NOAA partnership, in 2003, He later rejoined the NERR as its director and manager in June 2013. Since then, he has been in forefront of regional efforts to address threats of climate change on the ecology and socio-economic well-being of the SFE community. This experience will provide the basis for his talk. Oh yes, and in his spare time, he still chases manzanitas.
Cost: Free