Terraqua's role within the Integrated Status and Effectiveness Monitoring Program (ISEMP; BPA Project 2003-017-00) continues to be to enable the Bonneville Power Administration to continue to implement ISEMP in the Upper Columbia and other pilot subbasins in Oregon (John Day) and Idaho (Salmon).  In FY2016, this contract supports the continuation of work from previous contracts, including providing local coordination (with co-managers and other interested parties such as the Regional Technical Team and Upper Columbia Salmon Recovery Board) and coordinating with ISEMP partners in Oregon and Idaho, implementing status and trend and effectiveness fish and habitat monitoring in the Entiat subbasin and in the IMW, fish sampling in the Wenatchee and Entiat River subbasins to validate habitat suitability and carrying capacity models, analysis, reporting, and managing and administering the contract.

Terraqua has been involved with ISEMP since its inception in 2003 and will continue to participate at a programmatic level via frequent conference calls, emails, and in-person meetings with other ISEMP contractors and BPA’s RME management team.  In FY16 Terraqua will continue to be involved in ISEMP analyses and tool development by providing statistical and modeling expertise, as well as input on study design refinements and manuscript and report preparation.  This involvement allows for improvements in field data processing and derivation of data into simple and complex metrics; support for the use of ISEMP and CHaMP data by analysts to address watershed-specific goals and to provide watershed-level context for site level information; developing approaches to extrapolate site-level data to the entire network, and ultimately feed data into decision support products such as the ISEMP life-cycle model.

Terraqua will continue to work with its ISEMP partners and collaborators, BPA and other regional interested parties to aid BPA in a monitoring synthesis to inform AMIP, respond to BPA's synthesis and evaluation of data to aid in CE and BA development, guide adaptive management at the watershed and basin-scale, and respond to ISRP/AB NPCC requests.  Terraqua will also continue to provide the lead technical writers and editors on the compilation of material from ISEMP and CHaMP collaborators for inclusion in an annual RME technical report.  

Timeline

In FY2003 TQ began coordinating with co-managers to implement ISEMP in UC, which included coordinating contracts with USFS, WDFW, BioAnalysts, YN, and WDOE; from 2004 – 2010 Terraqua’s work focused on coordinating and implementing habitat and fish monitoring in the Wenatchee, Entiat and Methow River subbasins (habitat monitoring was expanded into the Methow in 2007 as part of the Fast Track effort), protocol development, and programmatic reporting.  In 2011 the Columbia Habitat Monitoring Program (CHaMP; BPA Project 2011-006-00) was initiated and Terraqua continued to implement habitat and fish monitoring in the Wenatchee, Entiat and Methow subbasins.  The Entiat IMW was initiated in 2011 for which Terraqua provided the habitat effectiveness monitoring and assisted USFWS in the fish monitoring.  In 2015, the scope of work for fish effectiveness monitoring in the Entiat IMW expanded to include Terraqua being responsible for leading and staffing field crews for all tagging in the mainstem and Mad River, outside of the rotary screw trap which continues to be operated and maintained by USFWS (contract # 71541) and to provide personnel to help with operation of the RST at peak flow times in spring and fall.  In 2014 Terraqua implemented a two-year study in the Little Wenatchee to fill a data gap identified by WDFW for spring Chinook life cycle modeling, and in 2015 Terraqua implemented a one-year study in the Entiat to validate winter habitat suitability models for spring Chinook and steelhead.  In this contract for FY2016, Terraqua will continue to implement fish and habitat monitoring in the Entiat River subbasin, and will conduct fish monitoring at CHaMP sites in all three subbasins to validate habitat suitability and carrying capacity models.

Background

ISEMP 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 is one of several contracts that will implement this project, including contracts with NOAA, South Fork Research, EcoLogical Research, and Quantitative Consultants.