A state perspective on large scale urban restoration

In 1994 the California and US governments joined together to form "CALFED", an agency and stakeholder consortium to attempt to resolve conflicts arising from the shortage of freshwater water supply for ecosystem health and human needs centered on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, part of the largest estuarine system on the US West Coast. The CALFED program has four major objectives: ecosystem quality, water supply reliability, water quality, and delta levee integrity. Because of the comprehensiveness of the program, an ecosystem approach has proven valuable in developing an implementing ecosystem restoration. This conceptual framework directs both the science and human management of restoration activities, including considerations of scale, adaptive management, and handling complexities.