Free Talk: Ocean Beach + Fort Funston Dunes (SF)

Dune Verbena - Peter Baye

Despite a history of urbanization and military use, two major distinct dune systems directly connected to San Francisco’s Ocean Beach persist: the mostly artificial fringe of Sunset Dunes along the Great Highway fill embankment, and the perched bluff-top dunes on uplifted ice-age (Colma formation) sand deposits at Fort Funston. All the dunes connected beaches bordering Great Highway are now in active planning for “nature-based” sea level rise adaptation(resilience) projects. Given that natural, pre-reclamation Ocean Beach dunes were mostly unvegetated, drifting waves of dunes, where do these plansfall on the spectrum between ecological restoration, and rehabilitation that aims to reconcile them with constraints of urban infrastructure? What insights from geologic and botanical history can be applied to guide plans for vegetation and sand management in this classic “coastal squeeze” shore, faced with abrupt acceleration of climate change and sea level rise? Peter Baye, coastal ecologist and botanist, provides an overview of prehistoric and historic background, and the ecological and geomorphic basis of emerging plans.

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