The projections for sea level rise in the coming decades are dire. Around San Francisco Bay, rising tides threaten to flood toxic sites, damage infrastructure, and submerge important habitat areas.
In 2015, Baykeeper launched an innovative project with funding from Google to digitally map the Bay’s shorelines. Baykeeper Scientist Ian Wren captured imagery of hundreds of miles of the Bay shoreline with a Google trekker camera—the same device used for Google Street View—mounted on a remove-controlled pontoon boat (pictured, right).
Now, in Google Maps, you can navigate within the Bay to view the Bay’s shorelines from the water.
ShoreView creates a historic record of the waterline and helps identify the areas of shoreline most vulnerable to sea level rise. ShoreView will help urban planners, developers, residents, and public officials prioritize solutions for long-term resilience.
Visit Baykeeper’s ShoreView site or Google Maps to explore the imagery yourself!
Baykeeper recorded the ShoreView imagery embedded in Google Maps using a remote-controlled trekker camera tethered to the Baykeeper patrol boat. In the Google Maps view above, captured near the Port of Oakland, the Baykeeper boat controlling the trekker is visible on the left.
