Evaluating Salmon Rearing Limitations in River Deltas: Difference between revisions

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'''[[Skagit River System Cooperative]] in collaboration with [[NW Fisheries Science Center]] and regional partners will evaluate how different parts of river deltas provide opportunities for juvenile salmon, allowing planners to determine what sites are likely to provide the most benefits.'''
==Project Objectives==
==Project Objectives==
*Uses 10-20 years of outmigrant data collected by the [[Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife]] ([[Skagit Delta]]) and [[Tulalip Tribes]] ([[Snohomish Delta]])and proposed to relate these to measurements of density and size of juvenile Chinook salmon in tidal deltas to derive independent estimates of capacity for each system.
This ESRP learning project, led by Correigh Greene (NOAA Fisheries), Eric Beamer (Skagit River System Cooperative) and Josh Chamberlin (NOAA Fisheries), sheds light on a critical uncertainty with respect to developing process-based restoration actions that maximize function for outmigrating Chinook salmon by seeking to understand the circumstances under which Chinook outmigrants are limited by the quantity or quality of natal tidal wetland habitat.  This project is unique with respect to its broad geographic range (we examined fish-habitat relationships in four tidal river deltas of Puget Sound: the Nooksack, Skagit, Snohomish, and Nisqually) and its integration of multiple datasets to explore both the patterns and mechanisms driving habitat limitation in Chinook natal estuaries. This project provides insights to inform both future estuary restoration actions as well as broader Chinook conservation efforts in Puget Sound. This body of work offers several practical insights for restoring habitat-forming processes in estuarine tidal wetlands, finding that restoration efforts that focus on connectivity, habitat complexity and habitat diversity are most likely to maximize rearing function for juvenile Chinook salmon. It also points to future work to better understand the relationship between natural origin (NOr) and hatchery origin (HOr) juvenile Chinook salmon in tidal wetland habitats of Puget Sound.
*Additional system level variation is explained by distributary network connectivity using Skagit models.
*Examines the influence of habitat types (forested riverine tidal, scrub-shrub, and estuarine emergent marsh) on growth potential through their effects on invertebrate abundance and (because prey vary in energetic value) their composition.
*We will quantify differences in the juvenile salmon rearing value of different habitat types with bioenergetics models, which estimate the energy an organism can allocate toward growth by incorporating prey consumption, prey energetic value, and metabolic activity as influenced by temperature.
*Predictions from models can be directly tested using individual habitat-specific growth estimates derived from otolith microstructure.
*These data have been collected for fish from the Skagit tidal delta, but not synthesized into a bioenergetics model. We propose to complete this task, and collect and analyze existing samples from the Snohomish, Nooksack and Nisqually to run and test the bioenergetics model for each system.
*The resultant analysis will reveal how local temperature and prey variation in different habitat types can influence growth, and the habitat-specific capacity of these types.  
*The primary outcomes of this analysis will be:
*#Assessment of density dependence in two estuaries factoring total habitat availability, habitat conditions, and connectivity
*#Bioenergetics modeling of habitat-specific growth potential including prey inputs, diet, temperature, and local rearing densities
*#Empirical testing of bioenergetics model using otolith-based growth increments in each system
 


==Reports and Publications==
==Reports and Publications==

Revision as of 23:31, 17 September 2021


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North Fork Skagit River Fishtown Bar area.JPG
This effort is linked to Coordinated Investment pilot work

Project Objectives

This ESRP learning project, led by Correigh Greene (NOAA Fisheries), Eric Beamer (Skagit River System Cooperative) and Josh Chamberlin (NOAA Fisheries), sheds light on a critical uncertainty with respect to developing process-based restoration actions that maximize function for outmigrating Chinook salmon by seeking to understand the circumstances under which Chinook outmigrants are limited by the quantity or quality of natal tidal wetland habitat. This project is unique with respect to its broad geographic range (we examined fish-habitat relationships in four tidal river deltas of Puget Sound: the Nooksack, Skagit, Snohomish, and Nisqually) and its integration of multiple datasets to explore both the patterns and mechanisms driving habitat limitation in Chinook natal estuaries. This project provides insights to inform both future estuary restoration actions as well as broader Chinook conservation efforts in Puget Sound. This body of work offers several practical insights for restoring habitat-forming processes in estuarine tidal wetlands, finding that restoration efforts that focus on connectivity, habitat complexity and habitat diversity are most likely to maximize rearing function for juvenile Chinook salmon. It also points to future work to better understand the relationship between natural origin (NOr) and hatchery origin (HOr) juvenile Chinook salmon in tidal wetland habitats of Puget Sound.

Reports and Publications

Funding and Scope

  • Funded by ESRP program in state FY 2013-15
  • The project expanded from the originally envisioned Skagit and Snohomish deltas to include the Nooksack and Nisqually deltas
  • Supported by NOAA
  • Project Contract in PRISM

Principal Investigators and Collaborators

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