Ballona Wetlands Ecological Reserve Comprehensive 5-Year Monitoring Report, December 2015

In 2009, The Bay Foundation (TBF) partnered with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), California State Coastal Conservancy (SCC), and Loyola Marymount University (LMU) to assess the ecological condition of the Ballona Wetlands Ecological Reserve (BWER or Reserve). The monitoring program was developed to comprehensively survey the biological, chemical, and physical characteristics needed to inform the State’s restoration planning process at the Reserve, as well as to develop baseline information and data to assist long-term and regional monitoring programs. This final, five-year monitoring report is a complementary document to the previous comprehensive baseline reports (Johnston et al. 2011, 2012) as well as supplemental technical memoranda, publications, and documents generated in the interim years. It presents data collected during all five years of the monitoring program and compares results across years when possible. To consolidate the information and immense data sets, detailed methods and specific data results were not repeated from the first two baseline reports unless new information was obtained in the subsequent monitoring years.