Biomonitoring to Evaluate Fish Habitat Enhancement

The CTUIR has implemented habitat restoration in five sub basins; The Grand Ronde, John Day, Tucannon, Umatilla, and Walla Walla river basins. The goal of this biomonitoring program is to evaluate the effects of habitat restoration on fish density growth, migration timing, and survival.  A two part approach was used evaluate habitat restoration; 1) field based surveys to generate reach scale fish and habitat data, and 2) implement a life cycle model to simulate watershed and sub-basin scale response to restoration actions. The primary treatments or habitat actions implemented were floodplain vegetation, active channel construction, active floodplain construction, migration pathways, and instream flows.  Spawning ground and juvenile mark recapture surveys for Spring Chinook (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), Steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss), and Bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus) were completed with Columbia Habitat Monitoring Protocol (CHaMP) surveys.  A before-after-control-impact experimental design was used to evaluate habitat restoration actions with a positive effect for eight treatments with controls.  The data will be analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and life cycle modelling for comparing between and among sites. The expected outcome is a biomonitoring program for evaluating habitat restoration at multiple spatial scales and could be used as a guide for implementing future habitat restoration.