DEFINITIONS

A full list of terms used in the project can be found in the downloadable Glossary.  A few of the most important and frequently used are provided here:

• Bayland Habitats – Areas of historic tidelands that lie between the elevations of the high and low tides, including those areas that would be covered by the tides in the absence of levees and other structures.  These lands were the focus of the Baylands Ecosystem Habitat Goals, a regional, ecosystem-based vision for habitat protection.

• Biodiversity - The complex of living organisms, their physical environment, the interactions among these organisms, and how they array themselves in the physical environment (Noss 1990, Redford and Richter 1999).  

• Conservation Lands - Areas protected for natural resource values by public purchase or easement, or private lands with a cooperative agreement and some level of stewardship for biodiversity.

• Conservation Lands Network - This network (also called the CLN) identifies areas that support irreplaceable, rare, and endemic plant and animal species, while also encompassing common plant and animal species.  The CLN meets the conservation goals for the vast majority of nearly 1,400 vegetation type and fine filter species targets, is relatively well-connected, and explicitly includes the stream and riparian network. 

• Conservation Planning - The systematic process of identifying areas important for conserving biological diversity or other open space values.  The result of this planning process is a network of lands that best conserves all elements of biodiversity within the planning area. 

• Core Areas – Large blocks of habitat that are protected, proposed for protection, and/or managed for biodiversity.

• Critical Linkages: The Bay Area and Beyond – SC Wildlands is leading this effort to identify vital wildlife corridors in the nine Bay Area counties plus Santa Cruz, San Benito, and Monterey counties to the south, and Mendocino and Lake counties to the north. The results complement the Upland Habitat Goals by providing a detailed analysis of areas where maintenance or restoration of ecological connectivity is essential to conserving biological diversity.  The final linkages will be incorporated into the Conservation Lands Network and Explorer in 2012.

• Linkage – A landscape connection that facilitates wildlife movement between habitat areas that is essential for maintaining biodiversity and healthy ecological processes.

• Subtidal Habitats - All of the submerged area beneath the bay’s water surface including mud, shell, sand, rocks, artificial structures, shellfish beds, eelgrass beds, macroalgal beds, and the water column above the bay bottom.  The focus of the San Francisco Bay Subtidal Habitat Goals Project.  

• Upland Habitats – As used in this project, refers to all habitats found above the baylands, which were the subject of the Baylands Ecosystem Habitat Goals and therefore not included in the Upland Habitat Goals Project.

Photos: A Field of Beans in Pescadero by Annie Burke.  Bullfrog by Bob Gunderson.