88171_RAA_ItsTime_Comic_R1_Proof

RESEARCH and CONTEXT Like many, I think a lot about climate change. I contemplate what our physical environs will be like—and how we will mitigate and adapt what we are moving towards and through. This story—this “future memoir” is essentially my hopepunk built out of a need to imagine us not building sea walls that will eventually fail, but instead working with restoration and nurturance of natural systems that function as part of a healing ecology. While this story is in my imagined personal future, I did a lot of research, and want to share some of the macro context: Estuaries, watersheds, tidal marshes, and intertidal zones are complex ecosystems and rich biological resources. San Francisco Bay is just one small part of the San Francisco Estuary, the largest estuary in California. Its watershed extends almost 60,000 square miles and reaches 40% of California. In my story, water management applies knowledge and collaboration

with indigineous land stewardship. Continued and coordinated restoration of the San Francisco Estuary will help with mitigation and absorption of rising sea levels, as well as support habitats for innumerable species, food webs, living soil, and water. Current wetlands have filtered and locked into their sediment heavy metals like methyl mercury that will be stirred up by the rising seas. Rising waters will also release toxins currently buried in landfill on which parts of San Francisco are built. I imagine fungal matts used as an ecological way to filter and clean up heavy metals and other released toxins, but it will take time. In the meanwhile, water will carry many of these toxins. Oysters, too, help to filter heavy metals out of the water—but it does make the oysters unsafe to eat. Speaking of eating...and the need for water, I’m imagining passive water collection nets connected to water storage and gardens; lots more solar panels; and a rewilding with edible native plants.