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Open-File Report 2012-1245

Linking Physical Monitoring to Coho and Chinook Salmon Populations in the Redwood Creek Watershed, California—Summary of May 3–4, 2012 Workshop

By Mary Ann Madej, Alicia Torregrosa, and Andrea Woodward

Introduction

On Thursday, May 3, 2012, a science workshop was held at the Redwood National and State Parks (RNSP) office in Arcata, California, with researchers and resource managers working in RNSP to share data and expert opinions concerning salmon populations and habitat in the Redwood Creek watershed. The focus of the workshop was to discuss how best to synthesize physical and biological data related to the freshwater and estuarine phases of salmon life cycles in order to increase the understanding of constraints on salmon populations.

The workshop was hosted by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Status and Trends (S&T) Program National Park Monitoring Project (http://www.fort.usgs.gov/brdscience/ParkMonitoring.htm), which supports USGS research on priority topics (themes) identified by the National Park Service (NPS) Inventory and Monitoring Program (I&M) and S&T. The NPS has organized more than 270 parks with significant natural resources into 32 Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) Networks (http://science.nature.nps.gov/im/networks.cfm) that share funding and core professional staff to monitor the status and long-term trends of selected natural resources (http://science.nature.nps.gov/im/monitor). All 32 networks have completed vital signs monitoring plans (available at http://science.nature.nps.gov/im/monitor/MonitoringPlans.cfm), containing background information on the important resources of each park, conceptual models behind the selection of vital signs for monitoring the condition of natural resources, and the selection of high priority vital signs for monitoring. Vital signs are particular physical, chemical, and biological elements and processes of park ecosystems that represent the overall health or condition of the park, known or hypothesized effects of stressors, or elements that have important human values (Fancy and others, 2009). Beginning in 2009, the I&M program funded projects to analyze and synthesize the biotic and abiotic data generated by vital signs monitoring and previous in-park natural resource monitoring and inventories to provide useful information, models, and tools to park managers for addressing resource management issues. The workshop described in this report is an element of the project funded by USGS NPS-I&M program to conduct a synthesis of salmon-related datasets in the Klamath (KLMN) and San Francisco Bay Area (SFAN) networks of national parks. The synthesis focused on four park units: Redwood National Park (KLMN), Point Reyes National Seashore, Muir Woods National Monument, and Golden Gate National Recreation Area (SFAN).

KLMN and SFAN span the Pacific coast of northern California and inland Oregon. In this region, daily, seasonal, and decadal variation in abiotic drivers (for example, precipitation, fog, streamflow, and temperatures of air, ocean, and streams) regulate many ecological processes, including the distribution of vegetation and wildlife and the frequency of disturbances from fires, floods, landslides, and biotic pests. However, the exact nature of the linkages between abiotic drivers and the direct and indirect effects of these drivers on species of concern and their habitat are not well understood. Specifically, abiotic drivers commonly are analyzed as individual elements (that is, calculating mean annual precipitation) and the linkages between drivers (such as the influence of changes in streamflow on stream temperature) are poorly defined.

In addition to an understanding of the basic linkages between abiotic and biotic ecosystem elements, the question of climate change is of increasing concern to land managers in the national parks. Land managers need to understand how climate change already has affected natural resources and whether other changes may be looming. Without this understanding, it is increasingly difficult to judge the effects of management efforts (for example, stream restoration), to evaluate the resilience of existing habitats, or to plan future management actions. For example, climate change has been linked to more rain and less snow in the Sierras (Cayan and others, 2008), identifying the need for land managers to address long-term water storage. In contrast, there has been a scarcity of information depicting the effects of natural climatic cycles and anthropogenic climate change, aside from sea-level rise, in coastal California and Oregon including KLMN and SFAN (Suffling and Scott, 2002; Hayhoe and others, 2006).

Complicating a manager’s ability to respond to climate change effects is the common assumption of stationarity—the idea that natural systems fluctuate within an unchanging envelope of variability (Milly and others, 2008). The stationarity assumption is being compromised by major shifts in background environmental conditions. As a result, the timing, magnitude, and intensity of critical abiotic elements in national park units may be changing. Additionally, the common assumption that restoration planning can use historical reference conditions as a goal may not be valid if extrinsic drivers in national parks show non-stationarity. Consequently, the understanding of trends, variability, and interactions among abiotic drivers is needed to inform and prioritize restoration sites or activities and to implement scenario planning to foster strategic thinking about future conditions and management alternatives.

In central and northern California, several salmon populations have been in decline for years. In 1997, coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) were federally listed as threatened in the Southern Oregon- Northern California Coast (SONCC) Evolutionary Significant Unit, including Redwood National and State Parks, and as endangered in the Central California Coast Evolutionary Significant Unit, including SFAN parks. In 2012, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries Service is finalizing a recovery plan for the SONCC coho, and they identify Redwood Creek coho as a core population. Redwood Creek drains an area of 738 km2 and enters an estuary at Orick, California. In the uppermost 72 km of Redwood Creek, the river flows through privately owned land primarily under timber management, and in the lower 36 km, it flows through RNSP. Prairie Creek, the largest tributary of Redwood Creek (100 km2 in area), supports much of the coho population. Millions of dollars are being spent in coastal parks on watershed and stream restoration projects. As the NPS plans salmon restoration activities in coastal watersheds, it is critical to understand the abiotic factors and interactions that affect salmonid populations (MacCall and Wainwright, 2003; Battin and others, 2007).

Many long-term datasets are being collected by SFAN and KLMN as part of the vital signs monitoring program, and additional datasets are available from park units and other agencies. The USGS-NPS program funded the authors to conduct a synthesis of salmon-related datasets in Redwood National Park, Point Reyes National Seashore, Muir Woods National Monument, and Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The overall goals of the synthesis are to better understand (1) the linkages among abiotic drivers, (2) the direct and indirect effect of these drivers on salmon and salmon habitat; and (3) to make predictions about the effects of potential management actions on salmon habitat and populations. A step in reaching these goals was to convene a workshop for researchers and resource managers working in RNSP to share data and expert opinions concerning salmon populations and habitat in the Redwood Creek watershed.

Workshop objectives were to:

  • Provide natural resource managers of RNSP with initial data compilations, analyses, and syntheses in forms relevant for decisions on issues of park concern, such as restoration of native habitats;
  • Solicit expert opinions on conceptual models representing various synthesis approaches;
  • Show an example of synthesis of salmonid population and habitat data developed for SFAN;
  • Examine datasets from Prairie Creek, Redwood Creek, and the Redwood Creek estuary to develop conceptual models that synthesize the vital signs of Redwood National Park for park management use;
  • Solicit input from the group to identify the synthesis approach that best fits the available data and the needs of park resource managers and specialists;
  • Identify data gaps and action items to advance analyses; and
  • Engage workshop participants in the effort to fill data gaps by contributing existing but unincorporated data or by deriving proxies for data gaps.

First posted November 29, 2012

For additional information contact:
Director, Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center,
U.S. Geological Survey, 777 NW 9th Street
Corvallis, Oregon 97330
http://fresc.usgs.gov

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Suggested citation:

Madej, M.A., Torregrosa, Alicia, and Woodward, Andrea, 2012, Linking physical monitoring to coho and Chinook salmon populations in the Redwood Creek Watershed, California—Summary of May 3–4, 2012 Workshop: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2012-1245, 24 p.



Contents

Introduction

Summary of Previous Fisheries Meetings

Summary of Existing Data and Data Gaps

Synthesis Approach Developed for Olema Creek (SFAN)

Possible Data Syntheses and Modeling Efforts for RNSP

Questions to Answer and Next Steps

Concluding Remarks

References Cited

Appendix A.List of Participants


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