Contract Description: The Integrated Status and Effectiveness Monitoring Program (ISEMP, 2003-017-00) is an ongoing collaborative effort to design, test, implement and evaluate Status and Trends Monitoring for salmon and steelhead populations and their habitat, and watershed-scale Effectiveness Monitoring for management actions impacting salmon and steelhead populations and habitat in the Interior Columbia River Basin.

ISEMP explicitly addresses work requirements of many 2008 FCRPS Biological Opinion RPAs (56.1, 56.2, 56.3, 57.1, 57.2, 57.3, 57.4, 57.5) and is directly related to additional 2008 FCRPS Biological Opinion implementation strategy requirements and recommendations. ISEMP takes a pilot-project approach to the research and development of monitoring by implementing experimental programs in several major subbasins of the Interior Columbia: the Wenatchee, Entiat, Methow, John Day, South Fork Salmon and Lemhi River basins. The overall goal of the project is to provide regional salmon management agencies with the data, information and tools necessary to design efficient and effective monitoring programs.

Specifically, ISEMP generates quantitative guidance on and examples of: the robustness and limitations of population and habitat monitoring protocols, indicators and metrics; sampling design approaches for the distribution of monitoring effort in time and space; analytical approaches to the evaluation of monitoring data, information and programs; effective data management and communication designs that support the use, standardization and compilation of implementation, compliance, status, trends and effectiveness monitoring data by regional data generators and decision makers; and finally the design and implementation of watershed-scale restoration actions to maximize both the biological impact and associated learning opportunities resulting from the design and implementation strategy.

Through its work to date, ISEMP has developed expertise in the coordination and implementation of large-scale monitoring data collection programs. Applying this experience, ISEMP coordinates the installation, maintenance and calibration of in-stream PIT tag arrays across the Snake River basin and is designing and coordinating the implementation of a Columbia River basin-wide stream habitat status and trends monitoring. These programmatic implementation facets of ISEMP leverage previous experience with logistics and social factors to effectively implement comprehensive, standardized monitoring research and development at an unprecedented scale.  

This contract supports the monitoring necessary for the Entiat IMW, and  is one of several contracts that will implement this project.  Each contract is responsible for an end of contract progress report.  Additionally, a project level "synthesis report" will also be produced under this project and data and analysis from this contract will be utilized in the production of that project level report.  The synthesis report is a deliverable under the Terraqua contract (not this contract) under this project.  

Under this contract, the USFS-PNW Research Station will compare the carrying capacity (and accompanying variation) between treated and un-treated reaches and between pre-treatment and post-treatment conditions in the same reach of the Entiat River subbasin.  Habitat availability and diversity have been identified as limiting factors for rearing juvenile salmonids.  Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) efforts are necessary to scientifically validate the effectiveness of in-stream habitat restoration projects designed to enhance fish production in tributaries of the upper Columbia River basin.  The response to in-stream restoration is typically quantified in terms of the numerical response of fish at the treatment site.  Censuses of abundance are performed for a specified length of time following a treatment and the results are compared to data obtained prior to treatment.  Increased fish abundance in treated reaches is the primary indication of a successful restoration action. However, this approach does not distinguish between actual increases in production and immigration to restored habitat from adjacent reaches; thus it is necessary to establish whether increases in abundance truly indicate increased capacity for fish production at restoration sites.  This work adds to and complements the effectiveness  monitoring already underway in the Entiat under ISEMP using mark-recapture surveys to obtain fish density estimates at pre-treatment, treated and untreated sites and addresses the need to incorporate density dependence and an accurate estimate of carrying capacity called for in the Upper Columbia Spring Chinook and Steelhead Recovery Plan (UCSRB 2007).  

Population ecology provides several tools for evaluating how fish performance (measured as individual growth, survival or other parameter that is correlated with the fitness of individuals in the population) changes with increasing population density.  If the relationship between fish performance and density is positively changed, then managers can confidently say that their restoration action has improved production of the fish species in question. We are proposing to perform field studies that quantify juvenile salmonid abundance and productivity that will extend effectiveness monitoring beyond censuses of abundance.  This project extends normal monitoring procedures beyond censuses that detect increases in abundance, by providing a direct estimate of whether the restored habitat can support greater production of fish compared with untreated habitat.  A further benefit will be a more precise estimate of the variability in the carrying capacity of fish for a given reach.  Because carrying capacity is used to parameterize many landscape-scale models that consider whole sub-basins, detailed knowledge of variability in carrying capacity will make the predictions of these models more robust.  Estimates of carrying capacity will also help researchers who use models to predict landscape-scale fish population responses to environmental fluctuations including climate change, supplementation, natural disturbance, and other restoration actions.

In order to coordinate among Project elements, the need for any changes in scope that may arise during the implementation of this SOW will be communicated to NOAA Fisheries and Terraqua, Inc. (by contacting Chris Jordan (1 541 754 4629) and Mike Ward (509-486-2426)).   Actual changes to this SOW must be approved by BPA.