To create healthy ecosystems that continue to function as the climate changes more rapidly, we need to redesign our landscapes as robust, resilient systems that take advantage of natural processes to derive desired benefits. Urban development in our watersheds and fringing our Bay wetlands (or baylands) must provide more habitat and connectivity for wildlife while treating runoff and delivering sediment to sustain the baylands. Tidal marshes must have terrestrial transition zones and freshwater inputs to provide maximum ecological value and resilience to sea level rise. Healthy Watersheds, Resilient Baylands reestablishes these functions by letting nature do the work of improving water quality, creating habitat, providing flood protection to threatened communities, and reducing maintenance costs.

Healthy Watersheds, Resilient Baylands offers a highly integrated approach to designing and implementing urban greening, wetland restoration, and water quality improvements within a set of representative urban-watershed baylands systems.

Outcomes will include 10 multi-benefit urban greening projects in Sunnyvale, Mountain View, and East Palo Alto. The projects will reduce stormwater runoff and will create up to 13 acres of wetland, riparian, and native plant habitat, and up to 10 acres of tidal transition zone and seasonal wetlands.