Sierra to the Sea

News & Publications

From the Sierra to the Sea: The Ecological History

of the San Francisco Bay-Delta Watershed

The image “file:///D:/Documents%20and%20Settings/adickinson.SFBAYORG/Desktop/000%20Cover%20(old)_1_0002.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

The vast watershed that feeds San Francisco Bay extends through the Delta to the rivers of the Central Valley and their tributaries in the high Sierras, draining more than 40 percent of California. The region has been the site of intense conflicts over the use of our land and water resources, but it now also has emerged as the focus of some of the most ambitious restoration efforts ever undertaken in the United States. From the Sierra to the Sea seeks to provide an information base for these efforts by offering a broad historical perspective of the system—What was it like when still relatively undisturbed? How has it changed over the past 150 years? —as well as recommendations to help guide landscape-level approaches to restoration.

The full report is available below for download at no charge. Bound copies of the report, CDs of the report (with maps in TIFF, JPEG, and PDF formats), and CDs of the GIS shp layers are also available. Click here for details.

Title Pages and Table of Contents (PDF 575KB)

Executive Summary (PDF 77KB)

Chapter One (PDF 17 KB)

Chapter Two (PDF 2,879 KB)

Chapter Three (PDF 3,382 KB)

Chapter Four (PDF 368 KB)

Chapter Five (PDF 39 KB)

References (PDF 122 KB)

Appendix (PDF 70 KB)

Maps:

G1 "The San Francisco Bay-Delta Ecosystem Distribution" (PDF 149 KB)

G2 "Historical Connected Waterways of the Central Valley" (PDF 175 KB)