This Echo is READ ONLY !   NO Un-Authorized Messages Please!
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

John Bluck July 7, 2003
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
Phone: 650/604-5026 or 604-9000
E-mail:  John.G.Bluck{at}nasa.gov

Release: 03-50AR
NASA HELPS RECLAIM 15,100 ACRES OF SAN FRANCISCO BAY SALT PONDS

NASA technology is helping state and federal governments reclaim 
15,100 acres of salt evaporation ponds in South San Francisco Bay, 
during one of the nation's largest restoration projects.

A small group of NASA scientists and technicians is studying salt 
evaporation ponds by using sensors on satellites and airplanes in 
addition to surface sampling, to learn how restoring the ponds to 
nearly their natural state may affect local ecology. The U.S. Fish 
and Wildlife Service and the California Department of Fish and Game 
recently bought many salt ponds from the Cargill Salt Company for 
$100 million. Scientists think the project will continue for more 
than 20 years.

"It is the largest tidal wetland restoration project in the western 
United States," said Marge Kolar of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife 
Service, Fremont, Calif.

"We are using sensors on satellites and aircraft, together with 
on-site sampling, to evaluate water quality of coastal wetland 
environments in the southern San Francisco Bay," said L. Jean 
Palmer-Moloney, a visiting geography professor from the State 
University of New York, Oneonta, who is leading the monitoring effort 
at NASA Ames Research Center, located in California's Silicon Valley. 
Her team includes Jim Brass, Dana Rogoff and Brad Dalton, all of NASA 
Ames.

For more than a century, people used the salt ponds and the abundant 
California sunshine to evaporate water and collect salt. This process 
changed the natural habitat of local plants and animals. The U.S. 
government, the state of California and other organizations now are 
working to restore the salt ponds to as close to the original, 
natural habitat as is practical. Work includes reducing salinity, 
reconnecting many of the ponds to the bay and looking for changes in 
the local environment.

"We are in a position to help determine the current state of the 
ponds," Palmer-Moloney said. "As the transition from salt ponds to 
tidal marsh habitat progresses over the years, we will be able to 
monitor ecosystem changes with satellite- and aircraft-acquired data 
to supplement field data collection," Palmer-Moloney added.

"We are taking samples from the ponds to determine what microbes live 
there as well as what the salt content is," said Rogoff, a laboratory 
technician working on the project. "We also will start using 
satellite imaging to monitor the ponds' microbial life," she added. 
Dirt levees separate the ponds from the bay. Before workers open 
levees to return the ponds to the natural ecosystem, experts must 
look at the effects of changing the salinity and habitat.

The California Regional Water Quality Board in Oakland is working 
with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Department 
of Fish and Game to determine 'safe' salinity discharge levels, 
according to Palmer-Moloney.

"When trying to understand the current state of the ecosystem in the 
south bay, the traditional method of getting information is from 
point sampling," said Palmer-Moloney. Collecting a water sample from 
a pond is one example of point sampling, she added. "In the field, a 
sample might show water pH, water temperature, salinity. In the lab, 
this same sample would provide information on the microbes that live 
in the water," Palmer-Moloney 
explained.                                                                 

"If you fly a plane over the salt ponds along the bay, you'll see 
they are different colors," Rogoff said. "These colors are often due 
to the microbes that live there, and we need to monitor them to make 
sure that we keep everything in balance as the team opens more of the 
ponds to the bay," Rogoff added.

Remote sensing from satellites and aircraft allows scientists to 
quickly deduce surface conditions over a wide area, the equal of 
hundreds of hours of point-sampling on the ground, according to 
Palmer-Moloney. Remote sensing is the use of sensors by satellites 
and aircraft to take images of parts of the Earth's surface in many 
wavelengths, some beyond the reach of the human eye.

"We are interested in helping and facilitating decision making in the 
restoration process, which is converting salt ponds to tidal marsh 
habitat," Palmer-Moloney said. "In a densely populated urban area 
such as the San Francisco Bay area, green space and open space are 
precious commodities, and right now, the urban build-up all the way 
to the edge of the bay has been held in check for about a hundred 
years by the industrial use of the coastal wetlands as salt ponds."

Over the years, human activities have changed the ecosystem of the 
southern San Francisco Bay. Some native plants and animals cannot 
tolerate the higher salt content of the ponds. Yet other animals such 
as the snowy plover bird thrive in the higher salt environments. 
"What's going to happen is that some of the ponds will be restored as 
closely as possible to the original, natural condition of more than a 
century ago," Palmer-Moloney said. "However, the project will 
maintain some of the salt ponds with higher salinity in order to 
provide niches for animals and plants that prefer a higher salinity 
habitat."

Many salt evaporation ponds are located next to NASA property. "The 
ecosystem doesn't recognize boundaries that humans draw on maps," 
Palmer-Moloney said. "There are interconnections between NASA land 
and the restoration area. There is an opportunity for NASA to 
contribute to the bay restoration project. NASA has satellites and 
aircraft with remote-sensing instruments already in place, and this 
is a wonderful opportunity to use them."

According to NASA scientists, the use of remote sensing to study 
coastal wetland environments is fairly new, and the work now underway 
to monitor the salt ponds in South San Francisco Bay may well serve 
as a prototype for cooperative research by other state and federal 
agencies.

"Hopefully, we can take some of what we're learning in southern San 
Francisco Bay and use it in other wetland areas in this country and 
abroad," said Palmer-Moloney. "In July, I'll be going to Belize, 
located just south of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. In Belize, I'll be 
studying a place called Chetumal Bay to examine how to apply 
technology we are using in the southern San Francisco Bay in Chetumal 
to characterize and document change in tropical salt marsh 
environments." Palmer-Moloney plans to work with Belize's Ministry of 
Natural Resources' Coastal Zone Management organization.

Some NASA scientific instruments scientists are using in the south 
San Francisco Bay salt pond recovery effort include the Advanced 
Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on the 
Terra satellite; the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer 
(MODIS) instrument on the Terra and Aqua satellites; and the thematic 
mapper on the Landsat 5 satellite. More information about the salt 
ponds project is on the World Wide Web at: 
http://geo.arc.nasa.gov/sge/wetlands

More information about NASA Earth sciences and how NASA researches 
Earth and shares results with federal and state governments and other 
organizations is on the Internet at: http://www.earth.nasa.gov/

-end-

 - END OF FILE -
==========

@Message posted automagically by IMTHINGS POST 1.30
---