This contract is in support of BiOp Fast track II.

In support of habitat restoration, rehabilitation and conservation action performance assessments and adaptive management requirements of the 2008 Federal Columbia River Power System Biological Opinion (FCRPS BiOp), the Bonneville Power Administration is working with NOAA and other regional fish management agencies to monitor status and trends of fish habitat for each major population group (MPG) in the Pacific Northwest identified through the Endangered Species Act (ESA).   Status monitoring provides information on the quantity and quality of current habitat and thus maximizes spatial coverage with a given number of sample sites.  Trend monitoring is used to detect changes in habitat through time and thus requires repeat samples at given sites.  Minimizing sampling and measurement error is crucial in order to differentiate this variability from natural variability though time and space.  In order to compare information across multiple MPGs, BPA is adopting a standardized fish habitat monitoring protocol, the Columbia Habitat Monitoring Program (CHaMP) for the Columbia River Basin monitoring programs.  

CHaMP is a Columbia River basin-wide habitat status and trends monitoring program built around a single habitat monitoring protocol with a program-wide approach to data collection and management which meets FCRPS Action Agency (2010) programmatic prescriptions for habitat monitoring.  CHaMP was developed by the Integrated Status and Effectiveness Monitoring Program (ISEMP) to capture habitat features that drive fish population biology and will result in systematic habitat status and trends information that will be used to assess basin-wide habitat condition and correlated with biological response indicators to evaluate habitat management strategies.  CHaMP is integrated with ongoing Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Program (PNAMP) and Recovery Planning efforts, as well as the collaborative process across Columbia Basin fish management agencies and tribes and other state and federal agencies that are monitoring anadromous salmonids and/or their habitat.  

The CHaMP is being proposed by the ISEMP and eight collaborating agencies  to help BPA meet the requirements of the 2008 FCRPS BiOp and RPA 56.3.  This program will provide information on the status/trends in habitat conditions, and will support habitat restoration, rehabilitation and conservation actions, performance assessments, and the adaptive management requirements of the 2008 FCRPS BiOp.  In addition, the CHaMP meets RPA 56.3, RPA 57, and RPA 3 by characterizing stream and fish responses to watershed restoration and/or management actions in at least one population within each steelhead and Chinook MPG which have, or will have, fish in-fish out monitoring (identified in RPA 50.6).  The watersheds originally identified for CHaMP include: Hood River, Wind River, Toppenish, Klickitat, Fifteen Mile, Lower Mainstem JD, North Fork JD, Upper Mainstem JD, Middle Fork JD, South Fork JD, Umatilla, Upper Grande Ronde, Catherine Ck, Imnaha, Lolo Ck, Tucannon, Asotin, SF Salmon, Big Ck, Lemhi, Pahsimeroi, Wenatchee, Entiat, Methow, and Okanogan.  These watersheds were chosen to maximize the contrast in current habitat conditions and also represent a temporal gradient of expected change in condition through planned habitat actions.  Following recommendations of the ISRP review, CHaMP is being implemented in a subset of these subbasins, which are Lower Mainstem JD, North Fork JD, Upper Mainstem JD, Middle Fork JD, South Fork JD, Upper Grande Ronde, Catherine Ck, Tucannon, SF Salmon, Lemhi, Wenatchee, Entiat, and Methow,  CHaMP collaborators will be supported by cross-project data management, stewardship and analysis staff, annual pre- and post-season meetings, annual field protocol and data management tool implementation training sessions.  

Program Elements

(1) Sampling Design
A Generalized Random-Tessellation Sampling (GRTS) survey design was recommended by Crawford and Rumsey (2009) for monitoring habitat status and trend in the Columbia River Basin.  The GRTS design was initially developed under the EPA’s Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program and is a probabilistic sampling design that has been shown to be advantageous for generating habitat condition parameters with known statistical characteristics.  The CHaMP monitoring design follows a  GRTS design with a 3 year rotating 1-to-1 split panel structure to distribute sampling effort in space and time, and has management tools for sampling design.  Implementing a GRTS survey design correctly is critical to producing a final dataset with known statistical characteristics requiring the implementation of strict procedures during the site evaluation and selection process.  A GRTS Site Selection Protocol and Tool will be provided to each collaborator to support field crews with efficiently completing the process while strictly enforcing design requirements.  

(2) Field Sampling
Habitat field sampling will follow the Bouwes et al. (2010) protocol that was developed after a review of fish habitat requirements, interactions of processes that influence fish habitat, the spatial scales for the context of these interactions, and current monitoring programs.  The protocol has the greatest probability of being comparable to other protocols and most relevant to salmonids and has been designed to be applied across varying spatial contexts depending on the logistical constrains of the sites.  In areas where GPS signals can be obtained, along with aerial photos, habitat units within reaches can be superimposed onto aerial photos with a map grade GPS.  In situations, where a GPS signal is not obtainable, units can be referenced to aerial photos and supplemented with on the ground measurements.  Finally, in situations where a GPS signal and aerial photos cannot be obtained a stick-and-tape method can be employed to delineate the reach into habitat units.  All approaches use a GPS map-grade data logger and thus do not require new gear for differing spatial contexts across related approaches.  

(i) Standardized Crew Training: Sampling and Data Capture Tool
Standardized field crew training in the recommended methods will be employed in all the CHaMP watersheds.  This standardized approach will promote crew efficiency and improved standardization across the region.  In addition to agency-specific safety and other training, CHaMP will provide training to support cooperating agencies that implement the recommended habitat protocol.

(ii) QA/QC crews to do repeat sampling across all participating watersheds
Repeated sampling of habitat monitoring sites within the same sampling season has proven to be an important component of GRTS-based, watershed-scale habitat monitoring.  Repeat sampling assists with 1) quality assurance/quality control, 2) the assessment of crew variability as a component of variation, and 3) providing improvements to temporal variability recognition (i.e., trend detection).  Furthermore, repeat sampling will be important to ISEMP’s research goals of testing the performance of the recommended protocols across the Columbia Basin.  To achieve these objectives, CHaMP will conduct repeat sampling visits for all watersheds in this program at 10 percent of all sampling sites during the low-flow index period.

(3) Data Management
For a monitoring program at the scale of the Columbia River Basin to be successful a robust data management system must be in place before initiating data collection.  Monitoring habitat in the CHaMP watersheds will generate a massive volume of data.  A system of data processing, storage, analysis, reporting, and distribution is available to meet the needs of a large-scale monitoring program, such as (a) documenting monitoring objectives, study design and intended analysis; (b) summarizing how, when, and where the monitoring data were collected, (c) supporting a range of analytical methods, such as hypothesis testing, time series analysis, structural equation modeling, and GIS support; and (d) adapting to changing requirements in the future.  The data system includes a centralized data warehouse and web-based data discovery tool (CHaMPmonitoring.org); data exchange and loading procedures; a database schema that defines data storage format (Aquatic Resources Schema, ARS); metadata tools; data capture, validation, and summary tools; quality control and assurance procedures; and data stewards who support the system.

(i) Field Data Capture Tools: Hand Held Loggers
Field crews will need applications to support data capture, review, summarization, and reporting and a suite of handheld and desktop tools to support both habitat and fish monitoring is available.  These tools have XML-based mechanisms to synchronize data.  This workflow includes documenting metadata about project and statistical design, entering survey event information and observations, performing quality assurance procedures, deriving metrics, and submitting data for archiving.

(ii) GIS Data Management and Geoprocessing
The large spatial scales that the CHaMP will cover means that assimilating and managing spatial datasets in GIS, accounting for the geomorphic context of sampling, and performing watershed or subbasin-scale analyses are important data features within these programs.  GIS data management support, coordination, and basic processing for monitoring programs that require data management guidance or processing assistance is available and development of geospatial models, the use of remote sensing technologies to collect continuous GIS datasets, such as LIDAR and aerial photos, and integrating field-based tabular data within a geospatial context is ongoing.  

(iii) Data Storage and Retrieval
The CHaMP will have multiple groups collecting data and it will be critical to have data accessible and available for use by all groups within the program.  CHaMPmonitoring.org serves as a long-term storage facility for monitoring datasets including metadata and features online interfaces for searching, viewing, and downloading datasets and documents associated with the coordinated monitoring program.

(4) Collaboration and Coordination
This is cooperative effort with ODFW focusing on sampling 25 sites within the steelhead population in the Upper Grande Ronde and CRITFC concentrating their efforts in the spring Chinook populations in the Upper Grande Ronde/Catherine Creek with 25 sites. In addition, ODFW will assist CRITFC in sampling five additional sites within the spring Chinook salmon distribution, which overlap with the steelhead distribution, to maximize the number of sites sampled and data sharing between the two agencies to achieve both programs' long term monitoring goals for steelhead and Chinook salmon in the Upper Grande Ronde River. ODFW will utilize CRITFC methodology when and where appropriate, in conjunction with CHaMP methodology to achieve these goals.

CHaMP collaborators will also be supported by cross-project data management, stewardship and analysis staff, annual pre- and post-season meetings, annual field protocol and data management tool implementation training sessions.  The project collaborators are also working with the US Forest Service PIBO staff monitoring program to coordinate on "efficiencies" with implementation of both the CHaMP and PIBO monitoring programs.  This work will continue through 2014.