IEP publications describe and interpret the results of projects in the San Francisco Estuary that fall into at least one of three categories:
- a project that was funded all or in part by the IEP and/or received Endangered Species Act (ESA) coverage via the IEP;
- a project that made use of substantial amounts of data or information provided by the IEP, or;
- a project that was conducted by IEP-affiliated authors and who chose to identify their affiliation as being with the IEP.
IEP Journal Publications (2016-2023)
Recent IEP Journal Articles
- NEW Authors Bashevkin, Burdi, Hartman, and Barros explore important aspects of a long-term IEP data record in their very approachable Data Review manuscript from the most recent volume of San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science. Long-term trends in seasonality and abundance of three key zooplankters in the upper San Francisco Estuary. This foundational treatment “reviewed past research and then examined trends in seasonality and abundance from 1972 to the present of three key but understudied zooplankton species (Bosmina longirostris, Acanthocyclops spp., and Acartiella sinensis) that play important roles in the estuary food web.”
- In a research article published in our regional journal San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science, Lee and others discuss the important topic of whether “Flow augmentations modify an estuarine prey field.” While clear links between flow and fish abundance are difficult to illustrate and document, the authors find that lower X2 in the fall (a larger freshwater area in the Delta and Suisun Bay) provides increased numbers of prey items (food) for Delta Smelt, which could help contribute to overall improvement to this endangered species’ regional habitat needs. Their citation:
- In this article in Estuaries and Coasts Stompe and colleagues discuss how: “Estuaries across the globe have been subject to extensive abiotic and biotic changes and are often monitored to track trends in species abundance. The San Francisco Estuary has been deeply altered by anthropogenic factors, which is reflected in substantial declines in some native and introduced fishes. To track trends in fish abundance, a multitude of monitoring programs have conducted regular fish surveys, some dating back to the late 1950s. While these surveys are all designed to track population-scale changes in fish abundance, they are methodologically distinct, with different target species, varying spatial coverage and sampling frequency, and different gear types. To compensate for individual survey limitations, we modeled pelagic fish distributions with integrated data from many sampling programs.”
The citation:
- Trophic interactions are complicated and have a strong hydrodynamic nature in the lower foodweb as detailed by Smits and 9 other San Francisco Estuary researchers in this publication in Ecological Monographs. “Drivers of phytoplankton and zooplankton dynamics vary spatially and temporally in estuaries due to variation in hydrodynamic exchange and residence time, complicating efforts to understand controls on food web productivity. We conducted approximately monthly (2012–2019; n = 74) longitudinal sampling at 10 fixed stations along a freshwater tidal terminal channel in the San Francisco Estuary, California, characterized by seaward to landward gradients in water residence time, turbidity, nutrient concentrations, and plankton community composition. We used multivariate autoregressive state space (MARSS) models to quantify environmental (abiotic) and biotic controls on phytoplankton and mesozooplankton biomass.”
Find the monograph at:
- Smits, Adrianne P., Loken, Luke C., Van Nieuwenhuyse, Erwin E., Young, Matthew J., Stumpner, Paul R., Lenoch, Leah E. K., Burau, Jon R., Dahlgren, Randy A., Brown, Tiffany, and Sadro, Steven. 2023. “Hydrodynamics Structure Plankton Communities and Interactions in a Freshwater Tidal Estuary.” Ecological Monographs e1567.
- From the San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science journal, Lacy, Dailey, and Morgan-King report on flooded agricultural lands and suspended-sediments in support of endangered fish habitats.
The citation is included here:
- In their essay from San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science, Sommer, Conrad, and Culberson discuss ways to improve the interface between scientists and managers, focusing particularly on those of us who produce technical information for consumption by managers:
- Nick Rasmussen and 7 others published on the “Efficacy and Fate of Fluridone Applications for Control of Invasive Submersed Aquatic Vegetation in the Estuarine Environment of the Sacramento‑San Joaquin Delta.”
You can find their article in Estuaries and Coasts, and the citation is included below:
- With important implications for regional water and nutrient management, Mussen and co-authors conclude: “Phytoplankton decline in the lower Sacramento River was the result of a combination of physical and biological factors, which differed among regions and between seasons. In the upper reach, the largest contributors to declines in phytoplankton biomass were dilution by the Feather River and grazing by clams. In the lower reach, the largest contributors were an unknown loss factor, followed by dilution by the American River and slowed phytoplankton growth because of light limitation.”
You can find their paper in San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science, and the citation is here:
- “Invasive aquatic macrophytes are a major threat to estuarine ecosystems globally, posing difficult control challenges for resource managers. This study examined the efficacy of a fluridone treatment program to control invasive submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV).” Such was the perspective of Khanna, Gaeta, Conrad, and Gross in a recent article from Biological Invasions, and the citation is here: