Yankee Fork Restoration Project (project) will continue developing a monitoring and evaluation plan for the Yankee Fork Salmon River (YFSR) and continue baseline data collection consisting of water quality data, physical and biological surveying, and permanent photo points for the contract year 2013.
Construction and enhancement was completed in fall of 2012 at Pond Series 3, creating side channel habitat; to determine the outcome of the actions of the creation of side channel, monitoring and evaluation tasks will begin in 2013.  We will continue the data collection with the use of Sondes, temperature thermographs, and discharge measurements and pressure transducers. Water quality monitoring will include long term deployment of multi-parameter water quality monitors (Sondes) at five or more sites: Flat Rock, Bonanza Bridge, Custer Bridge, Jordan Creek, West Fork Yankee Fork and the pond series 1-4. This data collection of continuous water quality will begin April and continue through November. The sondes will measure: pH, conductivity, temperature, turbidity, and dissolved oxygen and is dependent upon the stream conditions and storm events.  Temperature data will be collected throughout the Yankee Fork and tributaries. The project installs air and water thermal data loggers beginning in April and retrieves them in November as conditions permit; within the main-stem Yankee Fork the project will be collecting data throughout the year, commencing in February 2013 and continuing through January 2014. The project will continue to collect discharges measurements and stage readings (manually and digitally, with the use of pressure transducers).  The pressure transducers will gather continuous water levels throughout the field season.  There will be additional sites within dredged section of the Yankee Fork; these sites will collect water levels within the ponds series 1-4 and other tributaries.
We will continue working with USGS to maintain the gauging station (13296200 Yankee Fork above Salmon River Confluence near Clayton, ID), also in 2013, begin a sediment transport study within the YFSR.  In 2011 a USGS gauging station was placed on the lower end of the Yankee Fork Salmon River; the USGS will maintain this station while publishing the data on the USGS website presently and near future. It will be helpful to determine what the sediment transport out of the YFSR, therefore, we amended the USGS contract to include a sediment transport study in the years to come.  The USGS is providing half the costs (In-Kind Cost Share) to maintain the gauging station and sediment transport curve, this will assist in the long run, saving costs for future restoration actions on the YFSR.
The Tribes is currently working collaboratively to produce a research, monitoring and evaluation for the Upper Salmon Basin, the project is will use it specially for the YFSR and all restoration actions completed.  This is a working document and is important to the Tribes; therefore, we are putting some time into the process and look forward to putting into affect. The project will be utilizing methods in parallel until completion of the RM&E.
The project will continue to work with the Yankee Fork Inter-Disciplinary team (BOR, TU, USFS, SBT, USFW, and others) to complete a Yankee Fork Master Plan; prioritizing the enhancement of in-stream diversity, floodplain function, re-connecting tributaries, etc. Once again, the team has an opportunity to begin implementing projects in 2013-2014, Pond Series 2 and 4. In 2012, the team worked diligently to parallel implementation and finalizing the tributary assessment successfully and would like to continue the momentum and continue working on Pond Series 2 and 4 this year and the next. In the mean time, the team will be actively providing an overall Yankee Fork Master Plan for the future restoration actions. Pond Series 2 and 4 projects will be considerably less in costs for restoration, due to being back off the road and the objective is the provide fish access by removing culverts and check structures to allow the pond series to evolve naturally with additional flow, while re-grading some active channels between ponds.  As a team we are successfully moving forward with restoration actions within the Yankee Fork Salmon River; the Tribes have a long time understanding and previous commitments within the drainage and look forward to continue working and having traditional and cultural significance increase within this drainage and throughout the Salmon River and Columbia River Basin.