San Francisco Bay

San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary that drains water from approximately forty percent of California. The bay is located in the U.S. state of California, surrounded by a contiguous region known as the San Francisco Bay Area (often simply "the Bay Area"), dominated by the large cities of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose.

Hydrography[edit | edit source]

The bay covers somewhere between 400 and 1,600 square miles (1,000–4,200 km²), depending on which sub-bays (such as San Pablo Bay), estuaries, wetlands, and so on are included in the measurement. The main part of the bay measures 3 to 12 miles (5–20 km) wide east-to-west and somewhere between 48 miles (77 km)1 and 60 miles (97 km)2 north-to-south.

Geology[edit | edit source]

The bay sits atop a large number of inactive earthquake fault lines, including the San Andreas Fault, which was responsible for the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The USGS estimates that there is a 63% probability of a major earthquake occurring in the San Francisco Bay Area region before 2030.

Ecology[edit | edit source]

The bay was once teeming with fish and other marine life, and its shores and wetlands were lined with marshes, wetlands, and oyster beds. Today, the bay has been significantly altered by human activity, and the bay's once-abundant fish have been overfished.

References[edit | edit source]

External links[edit | edit source]

San Francisco Bay Resources
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