Implementing a Nature-Based Shoreline Resilience Design at Heron’s Head Park

Heron’s Head Park is located on an artificial fill peninsula in San Francisco Bay owned by the Port of San Francisco (“Port”). In 1998, the Port conducted a project to rehabilitate and enhance tidal marsh habitats on approximately 10 acres of the peninsula. Since that time, there has been extensive wave-driven erosion along the peninsula’s southern shoreline, significantly reducing the area and quality of the marsh habitat. In 2022, the Port completed a shoreline restoration project that constructed a coarse gravel beach, rock shoreline stabilization structures, and other habitat enhancement elements. The design intent was to create an ecologically functional shoreline that will resist erosion, improve the habitat value of the marsh, and be resilient to sea level rise for the next 30 years. The project provides a demonstration of a nature-based design approach, and the Port plans to monitor the site’s physical and ecological evolution over the next 10 years to inform future nature-based shoreline management.