The proponents have a good track record of addressing science review concerns and the ISRP appreciates their responses to our questions. The explanation of the relationship between this project and others in the region is very helpful. Comments below are intended to help the proponents and their partners as the project goes forward.

The project proponents have provided a more detailed explanation of the link between the project and ongoing effectiveness monitoring programs such as ISEMP/CHaMP and OBMEP. The goals of this work in relation to the objectives of Upper Columbia River (UCR) salmon recovery plans have been made clearer. The project is intended to fill information gaps that have been identified by the UCR Technical Team as being critical to calculation of VSP parameters for focal species, and will help determine why at-risk salmon and steelhead populations are continuing to decline in spite of the extensive regional investment in restoration.

The proponents clearly identify the critical gaps addressed in the proposed work as monitoring of all projects in the Upper Columbia for 1) implementation/compliance monitoring, and 2) reach-scale effectiveness monitoring. They propose adding an additional 36 sites in the Upper Columbia to the effectiveness monitoring being conducted, but further information about sampling sites would have made the proposal a little clearer. The ISRP appreciates that additional detail was provided with respect to treatment-control reaches for evaluating restoration effectiveness. The methods for locating sites (randomly selected, but stratified for restoration category) seem appropriate. One ISRP concern has to do with reach length. Study reaches of 150-500 meters may not be sufficient to detect changes in target species densities or other response metrics (reach lengths of 30 times the average channel width have often been recommended in fisheries work), so project proponents may wish to revisit the size criteria for some locations.

A more complete rationale for the work was presented in the Project Significance and Problem Statement, and the Emerging Limiting Factors sections. Descriptions of the response metrics and their importance were improved over the original proposal. The categories of restoration projects, which form the basis for stratification of study pairs, are also better described, although it was not clear how the 6 site pairs in Panel 2 will address all 7 Salmon Recovery Funding Board project categories.

The response was a little weak in addressing the ISRP's request for information about the status and trends in habitats and fish populations in areas where restoration is taking place. We were hoping for a few examples to illustrate where restoration has had, or has failed to produce, a measurable effect on target species, including some insight into why the monitoring was or was not successful. The history of restoration activity in the Upper Columbia is long enough that there should be some useful case studies.

The response states that data sharing between CHaMP, OBMEP, and this project will occur to "coordinate and share resources related to data management and QA/QC." It was not clear from the revision how this coordination would occur and who would act as the central clearinghouse for shared data. We guess it would be ISEMP, but that may not be the case.

The preliminary list of implementation/compliance metrics given in Table 4 is quite extensive and will need to be winnowed down to the most cost-effective and applicable ones. An attempt to select the most potentially useful compliance metrics should take place prior to initiation of post-project sampling. Likewise, the QA/QC guidelines should be completed prior to initiation of field measurements.

The response correctly points out that time constraints may limit some BACI-design evaluations to a single year of pre-treatment data. While this is not necessarily the most desirable scenario, the ISRP stresses the importance of completing at least one full year of pre-treatment sampling for those treatment/control pairs where a BACI study design will be used.

The ISRP feels that additional details are needed before it can complete a scientific assessment of this proposal, and for this reason we are asking for a response. The proposal should provide a clear description of relationships with other monitoring efforts in the Upper Columbia, including ISEMP/CHaMP and the large monitoring program planned for the Okanogan Subbasin (OBMEP). Monitoring is expensive and resources for conducting these projects are limited. Therefore, close coordination among related projects is critical to the efficient and effective use of monitoring funds. The description should go beyond box-and-arrow diagrams and explain how funding and manpower resources would be shared. The proposal needs to provide sufficient information about objectives, adaptive management, deliverables and work elements. More explanation could have been presented on the background and rationale for this project, as well as a summary of existing monitoring programs that have pointed to certain factors as being limiting to salmonid productivity. Most importantly, however, the proposal should provide more technical details about both the post-treatment implementation monitoring and the reach scale effectiveness monitoring. A brief list of metrics and citations is not enough; the ISRP needs to see a discussion of why certain metrics have been selected, information about sampling schedules, where monitoring sites will be located in relation to the restoration actions (at least in general terms), what types of sites will serve as controls, who will carry out the monitoring work, and how will the data be managed. Once this information is provided we will be able to assess the merits of the proposal. 1. Purpose, Significance to Regional Programs, Technical Background, and Objectives Valuable information could be produced by expanding current implementation and effectiveness monitoring efforts in the Upper Columbia to encompass all restoration projects (according to the presentation on September 13, 2010, many projects are not currently monitored). The proposal should include an expanded discussion of the threats to focal species in the Upper Columbia area and a summary of the major categories of habitat restoration that are taking place which the proposed monitoring would cover. It would also be helpful to summarize the existing implementation and effectiveness monitoring efforts currently in place, where they are located, what types of restoration projects they are monitoring, what the key findings to date have been especially with respect to limiting factors, and where significant knowledge or geographical gaps exist. More details should be given for the objectives. Most objectives are described in 1-2 sentences followed by an identical list of work elements (some of which are repeated multiple times) for each objective. This made it difficult to understand how the objectives were separated, other than by looking at the title. It was not clear in this section whether the proposal was primarily for post-implementation compliance monitoring or for reach scale effectiveness monitoring, although it became clear later in the proposal that the request was for both. 2. History: Accomplishments, Results, and Adaptive Management This project proposes to expand an existing set of monitoring sites. However, little information is provided on results that have been generated to date from the existing program. Some indication that the methodologies and design of the program have been effective would provide support for the plan to expand the number of sites monitored using this process. The project will expand the number of monitored sites to 30 control-impact pairs. A statement was made in the proposal that this number of sites was selected after conducting a power analysis, yet no information about this analysis is provided. As the ultimate value of the information generated by this project will be dependent on the statistical power of the experimental design, a reasonable description of this analysis should be included in the proposal. One must assume that this power analyses was based on monitoring results that have been generated from the existing study sites, further emphasizing the value of including project results in this proposal. Adaptive management is implied rather than directly addressed in the proposal. The statement is made that adaptive management in the Upper Columbia will be enhanced by the inclusion of more sites in the monitoring program, but no description of this adaptive management process is provided. There are several statements that monitoring data will be used by the Action Agencies’ expert panel process. Is this panel considered to be the core of the Upper Columbia adaptive management process? A more thorough explanation of how information generated by this project will be used to inform and change habitat restoration and fish management policies and practices in the Upper Columbia should be incorporated into the proposal. 3. Project Relationships, Emerging Limiting Factors, and Tailored Questions for Type of Work (Hatchery, RME, Tagging) A thorough explanation of the relationship between this proposed effort and other monitoring programs in the Upper Columbia should be incorporated into this proposal. The proposal does indicate several other monitoring programs, including ISEMP, but fails to indicate how this program will augment efforts already underway. The proposal also fails to mention a large monitoring effort planned for the area under the CHaMP program. The Colville Tribe has proposed a very large monitoring program for the Okanogan (OBMEP), with many of the same objectives as this proposal. The Colville monitoring program and the one proposed here should be carefully coordinated. Cooperation among these various monitoring efforts is essential to ensure that information is collected efficiently and in a compatible format. The proposal authors make the statement that this project will not interfere with other monitoring programs in the Upper Columbia. Avoiding interference should not be the objective. Rather all these monitoring efforts should be coordinated such that they provide complimentary information. A thorough discussion of the linkages among the various monitoring efforts in the area, one that clearly illustrates the coordination among these programs, should be added to the proposal. The statement is made that, “Various efforts are underway to resolve some of the confounding issues, including climate change-related projects in the Okanogan and Methow sub-basins to develop better streamflow forecasting tools.” This is useful to know because extreme low flows likely constitute a significant environmental limitation to salmonid productivity in many of the watersheds. However, more details are needed on how potentially confounding factors such as climate change will be addressed in this monitoring program. The proposal should be more explicit in this regard. 4. Deliverables, Work Elements, Metrics, and Methods Deliverables basically were often described in a single sentence. More description of what these deliverables will include should be added. The work elements were sometimes unclear and duplicative for different objectives. They were presented as a list of variables (e.g., length, width, bankfull height, etc.) with an associated reference, which provided the methods to be used in measuring this variable, but the same reference was often listed multiple times for a given parameter. The description of these elements in the proposal does not provide enough information to conduct a technical review. Under post-implementation compliance monitoring, the list of metrics should be given, even if it is still preliminary. For each provisional metric, sampling schedules (including years) and sample sizes (if possible) should be stated, as well as who would do the work and where the monitoring data would be housed. An explicit connection between each metric and one or more limiting factors should be given so that the relevance of the metric is clear. How, specifically, will QA/QC issues related to the metrics be addressed? Under SFRB reach scale effectiveness monitoring, will the 30 treatment-control pairs, plus the 6 pairs already requested, be stratified according to restoration type (e.g., fish passage improvement, increased in-stream flows, physical habitat restoration, nutrient management)? How long will the pre-treatment sampling period be? It would be very helpful to give more details on the SFRB effectiveness monitoring protocols and why post-treatment sampling will occur in years 0, 1,3, 5, and 10 (as opposed to a different schedule). Fish density is the only biological metric mentioned in the proposal, but some restoration actions could affect other parameters (e.g., fish growth or migration). Will other demographic properties of focal species be estimated?