Welcome to Science Action Agenda

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About

The Science Action Agenda (SAA) is a four- to five-year science agenda for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta that…

Prioritizes and aligns science actions to inform management decisions,
Identifies major gaps in knowledge,
Promotes collaborative science, and
Builds science infrastructure.

The SAA is developed by and for the Delta science community.

Scientists use the SAA to determine what science activities are critical to informing management, and in turn, what actions may be eligible for science funding.
Managers use the SAA to identify what science and management priorities are of shared interest across the Delta and to help shape organizational priorities.
Policymakers use the SAA to ensure that science for informing decision-making is prioritized and implemented.

The development of the SAA, a cornerstone of the Delta Science Strategy, was facilitated by the Delta Science Program. The inaugural SAA was published for 2017-2021. It guided $35 million in management-relevant science funding from the Council and its partners and advanced our state of knowledge on key management challenges ranging from water quality to habitat restoration. A Progress Summary of the 2017-2021 SAA showed that the Delta science community had made significant progress in enhancing its capacity for synthesis, integrating previously disparate datasets, and improving its understanding of the interactions between environmental stressors and managed species.

Chapters & Actions

Management Need 1

Management Need 1: Improve coordination and integration of large-scale experiments, data collection, and evaluation across regions and institutions.

Science Actions

Establish publicly accessible repositories, interactive platforms, and protocols for sharing information, products, and tools associated with monitoring and modeling efforts, in support of forecast and scenario development, timely decision-making, and collaborative efforts.
Evaluate the individual and institutional factors that enable or present barriers to coordination, learning, trusting, and using scientific information to inform decision-making and resource sharing within and among organizations.
Identify and implement large-scale experiments that can address uncertainties in the outcomes of management actions for water supply, ecosystem function, and socioeconomic conditions in the Delta.

Management Need 2

Management Need 2: Enhance monitoring and model interoperability, integration, and forecasting.

Science Actions

Evaluate and update monitoring programs to ensure their ability to track and inform the management of climate change impacts, emerging stressors, and changes in species distributions.
Develop a framework for monitoring, modeling, and information dissemination in support of operational forecasting and near real-time visualization of the extent, toxicity, and health impacts of Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs).
Enhance flood risk models through a co-production process with Delta communities to quantify and consider tradeoffs among flood risk management, water supply and water quality management, habitat restoration, and climate adaptation.
Iteratively develop, update, and make widely available forecasts of climatological, hydrological, social-ecological, and water quality conditions at various spatial and temporal scales that consider climate change scenarios.

Management Need 3

Management Need 3: Expand multi-benefit approaches to managing the Delta as a social-ecological system.

Science Actions

Conduct studies to inform restoration and approaches to protecting human communities that are resilient to interannual hydrologic variation and climate change impacts.
Develop integrated frameworks, data visualization tools, and models of the Delta social-ecological system that evaluate the distribution of environmental benefits and burdens of management actions alongside anticipated climate change impacts.
Identify how ecosystem restoration projects, in comparison to existing water management strategies, benefit and burden human communities, with an emphasis on environmental justice.
Test and monitor the ability of tidal, nontidal, and managed wetlands and inundated floodplains to achieve multiple benefits over a range of spatial scales, including potential management costs, tradeoffs, and unintended consequences.
Synthesize existing knowledge and conduct applied, interdisciplinary research to evaluate the costs and benefits of different strategies for minimizing the introduction and spread of invasive species, and to inform early detection and rapid response strategies.

Management Need 4

Management Need 4: Build and integrate knowledge on social process and behavior of Delta communities and residents to support effective and equitable management.

Science Actions

Use multi-method approaches (e.g., surveys, interviews, oral histories, and/or observations) to develop an understanding of how human communities’ values, and uses of cultural, recreational, agricultural, and natural resources vary across geography, demographics, and time.
Synthesize existing data and collaboratively develop additional long-term data collection and monitoring strategies to address knowledge gaps on human communities within the Delta and those reliant on the Delta, with the goal of tracking and modeling metrics of resilience, equity, and well-being over time.
Measure and evaluate the effects of using co-production or community science approaches (in management and planning processes) on communities' perceptions of governance and on institutional outcomes, such as implementation or innovation.

Management Need 5

Management Need 5: Acquire new knowledge and synthesize existing knowledge of interacting stressors to support species recovery and ecosystem health.

Science Actions

Identify and test innovative methods for effective control or management of invasive aquatic vegetation in tidal portions of the Delta under current and projected climate conditions.
Identify thresholds in the survival and health of managed fish and wildlife species with respect to environmental variables (e.g., flow, temperature, dissolved oxygen) and location-specific survival probabilities to develop strategies that will support species recovery.
Determine how environmental drivers (e.g., nutrients, temperatures, water residence time) interact to cause HABs in the Delta, identify impacts on human and ecosystem health and well-being, and test possible mitigation strategies.
Integrate and expand on existing models of hydrodynamics, nutrients, and other food web drivers to allow for the forecasting of the effects of interacting stressors on primary production and listed species.
Quantify spatial and temporal patterns and trends of chemical contaminants and evaluate ecosystem effects through monitoring, modeling, and laboratory studies.

Management Need 6

Management Need 6: Assess and anticipate impacts of climate change and extreme events to support successful adaptation strategies.

Science Actions

Evaluate how climate change, sea level rise, and more frequent extremes will impact habitats, water supply, water quality, sediment supply, long-term species persistence, primary productivity, and food webs.
Evaluate individual and cumulative impacts and tradeoffs of drought management actions on ecological and human communities over multiple timescales.
Evaluate the possible multi-benefits of management actions that promote groundwater recharge for ecological functions and water resilience under climate change (e.g., multiple dry year scenarios).
Identify how human communities connected to the Delta watershed are adapting to climate change, what opportunities and tradeoffs exist for climate adaptation approaches (i.e., agricultural practices, carbon sequestration, nature-based solutions/green infrastructure), and how behaviors vary with adaptive capacity.
Predict and test how water allocation and supply decisions, and ecological flow scenarios should change under projected climate change to maintain habitat conditions, access of target species to critical habitat, and interactions among native and invasive species.

Delta Science Plan

Science Action Agenda

Welcome to Science Action Agenda

About

Management Needs & Science Actions

Chapters & Actions

Management Need 1

Management Need 1: Improve coordination and integration of large-scale experiments, data collection, and evaluation across regions and institutions.

Science Actions

Management Need 2

Management Need 2: Enhance monitoring and model interoperability, integration, and forecasting.

Science Actions

Management Need 3

Management Need 3: Expand multi-benefit approaches to managing the Delta as a social-ecological system.

Science Actions

Management Need 4

Management Need 4: Build and integrate knowledge on social process and behavior of Delta communities and residents to support effective and equitable management.

Science Actions

Management Need 5

Management Need 5: Acquire new knowledge and synthesize existing knowledge of interacting stressors to support species recovery and ecosystem health.

Science Actions

Management Need 6

Management Need 6: Assess and anticipate impacts of climate change and extreme events to support successful adaptation strategies.

Science Actions

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