Project 1989-107-00 (Statistical Support for Salmonid Survival Studies) is very different from this project  (1991-051-00) M&E Statistical Support for Life-Cycle Studies.  The other project has, as its mission, to develop statistical models for fish tagging studies and provide technology transfer and support to tagging investigators.  That project is not concerned with data analysis but, rather, to assure Council-funded studies are designed and have state-of-the-art statistical methods available for analysis.  This project, on the other hand, processes M&E data to calculate peformance measures, track their trends, predict smolt run timing, and provide the public with ready access to this information. 

This project provides real-time analysis to monitor smolt outmigration timing for use in water management and fish operations of the hydrosystem.  Since 1994, we have provided daily forecasts of smolt outmigration timing in real time for as many as 30 fish stocks at 5 hydroprojects to provide managers with the information necessary to optimally time spill augmentation if desired.

This project also provides value-added analyses of historical tagging data.  Since 2002, this project has routinely processed CWT and PIT-tag data to summarize fish performance and made that information publicly available on the Internet. Currently, we provide the calculation of SARs for over 350 hatchery stocks in the Basin, estimation of survival and travel times for over 25 hatchery and wild stocks over as many as 9 reaches, and the estimation of transportation effects, ocean survival (i.e., Bonneville to Bonneville), upriver adult survival, adult fallback rates at dams, and differential mortality (D) using joint juvenile and adult PIT-tag data for hatchery and wild Chinook salmon and steelhead. This project also summarizes compliance of spill, flow, and total dissolved gas levels with target goals at all major hydroprojects.

This project has a much larger scope than the comparative survival study (CSS) and Fish Passage Center (FPC) monitoring.  We use some of the same data as the CSS to calculate performance measures such as transport/inriver ratios (T/I) and D.  But we also go beyond that to estimate ocean survival, upriver adult survival, age composition, differences in upriver survival of transported and non-transported fish, etc.  We also perform the analyses differently.  While the CSS calculates T/I and D relative to the so-called C₀ fish (fish never bypassed), we compare performance between transported fish and all inriver fish passage histories.  We believe this is more meaningful to managers wanting to know if transportation was beneficial versus the alternative option of keeping fish inriver at existing river operating conditions.  These analyses are also performed to provide BPA with independent assessment capabilities. 

Finally, our status and trends monitoring also includes wide-scale analyses of the Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) flow, spill, and water quality data, and comprehensive use of the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission (PSMFC) RMIS and PTAGIS databases.  PSMFC restricts itself to the role of data repository.  We provide summaries and relevant performance measures so the public can inspect and monitor trends in fish performance and hydroprogram operations.