This contract is in support of a BiOp Fast track II project.

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 will 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.  CHaMP was implemented  in the first year of implementation FY11, in a subset of these subbasins, which are referred to as the pilot watersheds and include: 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, In FY12, CHaMP will be implemented in these same Pilot watersheds.  Coordination and support of CHaMP deliverables associated with additional watersheds beyond those included in the list of Pilot watersheds are outside the scope and budget of this contract.

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.  

(1)             Roles
CHaMP staff - refers to individuals under contract with BPA through the following list of contractors (e.g. TQ, QCI, SFR, Sitka) and includes Chris Jordan (NOAA) who is principle investigator of Project #2011-006.  Collaborators/Collaborating Agencies:  Refers to those contractors implementing CHaMP status/trend monitoring under Project #2011-006. First-Time Collaborators - Refers to collaborators whose first year of sampling is 2012.  Returning Collaborators - Refers to collaborators whose first year of sampling was 2011.

Program Elements

(2) 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.  

(3) Field Sampling
Habitat field sampling will follow the Bouwes et al. (2011) protocol that will be modified in 2012 in response to Pilot-year "lessons-learned" and 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.  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 provided/required of all CHaMP field crews.  This standardized approach will promote crew efficiency and improved standardization across the region.  In addition to agency-specific safety and other training, CHaMP staff 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 CHaMP'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.

(4) 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 (see www.CHaMPMonitoring.org) includes a centralized data warehouse and web-based data discovery tool; data exchange and loading procedures; a database schema that defines data storage format; 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.  The CHaMP data management system 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.

(5) Reporting
In such a large and geographically dispersed program such as CHaMP it is important to have an annual review of the data collection events so that any issues experienced or lessons learned over the field season can be addressed in a timely manner and with each collaborators' input.  To that end,  collaborators will submit a summary of their field season to the CHaMP Lead Coordinator who will collate and summarize the data collected, logistics of implementation and lessons learned from each field season into an Annual Synthesis Report.  This report will be used to inform full implementation in 2013, including any adjustments that may be appropriate on the design or scope of the project.

(6) Post-season Workshop
A post-season workshop will be held to address the questions and comments posed by the ISRP and the Council pertaining to CHaMP and to review the FY12 season, look at the data, discuss the protocol, review the draft logistics/lessons learned CHaMP Annual Synthesis report, and plan the next season. Topics covered could include a programmatic overview of CHaMP, an overview of the study design and objectives, review of the protocol and data management tools, and analytical approaches.